30,000 New Cancer Cases in Israel Annually, Group Says

There are over 200,000 people in Israel suffering from cancer, and each year about 30,000 new cases are reported – with 450 of them children, the Israel Cancer Society said in a report released Monday. The report was released in advance of National Cancer Awareness Day, which the Society uses to spread awareness of the disease and to raise money to advance treatment.

According to the Society’s study, 42 percent of Israeli adults have at least one relative who is a cancer patient or victim – most of them a first-degree relative. Among youth 15-17, 29 percent said they had a relative with cancer, usually a grandparent. 15.3 percent of Israelis 45-54 said that their mothers had contracted the disease, while 12.1 percent of those 55-64 said that their fathers had suffered from cancer.

Around the world, said the Society, some 14 million new cancer cases are reported worldwide, 60 percent of them in Africa. Over the next two decades that number is expected to swell by some 70 percent, due to aging populations, continued environmental dangers and the expansion of the world population. Among men, the most prevalent form of the disease was lung cancer, followed by colon cancer, stomach cancer and liver cancer.

Professor Eliezer Robinson, head of the Society, asked the public “to open their hearts and hands, and their doors, when volunteers knock and ask for resources to help us with our many activities, helping patients and working to prevent the spread of this disease.”