Someone in Taiwan is diagnosed with cancer every 4 minutes, 42 seconds, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday, adding that colon cancer was the most common cancer diagnosis in 2017, for the 12th straight year.
The 2017 Cancer Registry Annual Report released yesterday by the agency showed 111,684 new cancer cases that year, up by 5,852 from a year earlier.
The median age of diagnosis in 2017 was 63 years old, the same as a year earlier, but the median age of diagnosis for some types of cancer was lower, such as for esophageal cancer (58), oral cancer (57), breast cancer (55) and thyroid cancer (50), the agency said.
Photo: CNA
A new case of cancer was diagnosed every 4 minutes, 42 seconds — which was 16 seconds faster than a year earlier, HPA data showed.
The 10 most common types of cancer in 2017 were colon cancer, lung cancer, female breast cancer, liver cancer, oral cancer (including oropharyngeal and hypopharyngeal cancers), prostate cancer, thyroid cancer, skin cancer, gastric cancer and esophageal cancer.
The list was the same as a year earlier, except that skin cancer and gastric cancer switched places.
The age-standardized incidence rate was 305.4 cancers per 100,000 population, or 8.7 higher than a year earlier, Cancer Prevention and Control Division Director Lin Li-ju (林莉茹) said.
The standardized incidence rate, types of female cancer and colon cancer increased more than other types, she said, adding that 16,408 people were diagnosed with colon cancer, making it the most common type of cancer for a 12th consecutive year.
The three most common types of cancer in women were breast cancer, colon cancer and lung cancer, with 52,387 women being diagnosed, HPA data showed.
The number of breast cancer screenings in 2017 rose by 48,000, while colon cancer screenings increased by about 22,000, Lin said, adding that most of the new breast cancer and colon cancer cases were caught at stage 0 or stage 1, meaning that increased awareness helped detect cancer earlier.
Cancer is often detected after years of unhealthy habits, while the WHO has said that 30 to 50 percent of cancers are preventable, Lin said.
The HPA recommends that people avoid smoking tobacco, chewing betel nut and drinking alcohol, and that they eat a balanced diet, exercise regularly, keep a healthy body weight and get screened for cancer regularly, she added.
Getting regular pap smears can lower the mortality rate of cervical cancer by 70 percent, while getting a mammogram every other year can reduce the mortality rate of breast cancer by 41 percent and a fecal occult blood test every other year can reduce the mortality rate of colon cancer by 35 percent, the agency said, citing National Health Insurance Administration statistics.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS