27,516 people were diagnosed with cancer and 11748 people died from the disease in 2019, according to updated data from the National Cancer Registry at the Ministry of Health presented on the occasion of World Cancer Day.
Cancer is the first cause of death in the State of Israel, with the most deadly cancers being breast and lung cancer in women and lung cancer and colon cancer in men.
In terms of the types of cancer that are common in Jewish and Arab men, we can mention prostate, lung, and colon cancer.
Among women, breast and colon cancers lead.
The incidence of cancer is 236 per 10,000 among Jewish women, 228 among Jewish men, 206 cases among Arab men and 177 cases per 100,000 Arab women.
The data show that there is a consistent and steady downward trend in cancer mortality in all population groups at a rate of between half a percent and one percent per year.
The Ministry of Health's press conference on the occasion of the publication of the cancer data,
There is also a declining trend in the morbidity itself: until the years 2007-2006 there was an increase in the number of sick men and since then there has been a clear and statistically significant decrease.
Until 2015, there was a trend of stability among Jewish women and since then there has been a decline.
Among Arab women there was an upward trend until 2016 and since then the trend has stopped, but in the last two years there has been a decline that is not statistically significant.
Compared to 343 countries and regions in the world, Israel is in a relatively high 49th place in the morbidity rate (risk of 240 people starting from every 100,000), but in a lower place -89 in mortality, with a rate of 90 per 100,000.
Will the quality of care be improved?
"There is a decrease in the risk of cancer in most population groups," concluded Prof. Little Keenan Boker, director of the Center for Disease Control, who presented the data.
"The International Holocaust certainly says something about treating early detection and cancer survival," said Prof. Keenan Boker.
Prof. Ido Wolf, Chairman of the National Council of Oncology and Director of the Ocology Department at Ichilov, noted that in the coming year, two measures will be launched to improve the quality of cancer patients' treatment in Israel. That will ensure better and safer care and reinforcement for public medicine.
The patient will know that an entire team is discussing him.
Fewer patients will have to run for a second opinion.
"Once we finish this all over the country there will be a revolution," he said.
The second move is to introduce a measure of the quality of treatment that will examine the speed with which a colon cancer patient who has undergone surgery arrives for chemotherapy treatment.
He further updated that in 2022 a pilot will be launched to test the applicability of early detection of lung cancer through a Low Dose CT (LDCT) test.
Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said at the press conference: "Apart from Corona, there are other diseases and other problems. Corona does not reduce or eliminate mortality from cancer or heart attacks. It is also. We must not forget or neglect other areas."
The minister also noted that "environmental risk factors have a decisive effect: alcohol smoking, poor nutrition, air pollution and lifestyle habits affect about a third of cancer deaths in Israel.
"The Ministry of Health is leading a national intervention program to change health habits called 'Possible Healthy'. Of course monitoring and early detection are not always successful so we are at the forefront of treatment. Cancer treatments are very expensive and a citizen can not and should not fund them himself."
"Prevention and early detection is the key to fighting cancer at the individual and national levels and engaging in Corona has also challenged this area," Prof. Nachman Ash, director general of the Ministry of Health, said at the press conference.
He said, "The availability of services, especially prevention services, was often low because if the HMOs had to deal with tests and vaccinations, things were harmed and the persuasion of people to come and do preventive tests was abandoned. "I urge you not to neglect early detection tests such as occult blood in the stool, colonoscopy or mammogram."
Data presented by Prof. Keinan Boker show that the percentage of mammograms performed in the year 2020 at the beginning of the corona was no different from previous years.
This is despite the fact that transparent hospitals reported a large decline in the first months of 2020.
But apparently then the patients came for examination.
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
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