For many years, breast cancer has been the most common cancer among women in Taiwan, with more than 10,000 new cases every year, the Formosa Cancer Foundation said yesterday, urging women to go for regular checkups and exercise to reduce their risk of breast cancer.
As next month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the foundation yesterday held a news conference to raise awareness and invited dance celebrity Serena Liu (劉真) to teach breast cancer patients some dance techniques to help them maintain a happy mood
Foundation chief executive officer Lai Gi-ming (賴基銘) said that among women, breast cancer has the highest incidence rate of all cancer types, and the number of cases has been growing every year, reaching an average of 35 cases per day.
While there were 2,952 cases of beast cancer reported in 1996, the number grew to 12,672 in 2016, increasing 4.2 times in two decades, the foundation said.
The number of cases grew the most among women aged 50 to 54, increasing 6.3 times over the same period, it added.
More younger women are being diagnosed with breast cancer, which might be because they are choosing to have children later in life or due to exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals, Lai said.
The five-year survival rate for breast cancer found in its early stages is more than 90 percent, he added.
People undergoing chemotherapy might feel tired and unwilling to take part in physical activities, and while chemotherapy can damage cells and decreases a person’s metabolism, exercising regularly can improve the immune system and maintain muscle mass, Lai said.
Foundation deputy chief executive Tsai Li-chuan (蔡麗娟) said a study has suggested that performing moderate-intensity exercise for 30 to 60 minutes per day reduces the risk of breast cancer by 25 to 30 percent, and that chemotherapy patients working with the foundation have also said that dancing has helped them regain self-confidence and improved their quality of life.
A 47-year-old interior designer and mother of two children surnamed Wang (王) was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer with lymph nodes metastasis, and experienced painful side effects from chemotherapy.
Wang joined a dance group at the hospital and learned to let go off stress while dancing.
She has completed her chemotherapy, but still joins the group every week.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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