Breast cancer experts call for better survival rate

The country's leading medical experts in breast cancer, the most prevalent cancer in Chinese women, proposed the target of keeping up the five-year survival rate among such patients in the country with the United States and Europe by 2030.

The current five-year survival rate among breast cancer patients in China is 83 percent, according to statistics from the National Cancer Center, compared to between 91 and 92 percent in the US and Europe.

So far only big cities, such as Shanghai, are at the same level regarding the rate, but it is only at around 70 percent in rural regions, said Yin Yongmei, deputy director of the breast cancer expert committee affiliated with the Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology, at an expert meeting organized by US-based pharmaceutical company Pfizer at the ongoing second China International Import Expo on Friday.

Yin, also deputy director of oncology at the Nanjing-based Jiangsu Provincial Hospital, said that both diagnosis and medical treatment levels in rural areas need to be improved.

"The incidence rate of breast cancer in China's rural regions is around 10 percent lower than that in cities, but the mortality rates show little difference, indicating the medical treatment in rural areas needs to keep up," she said, adding that the breast cancer expert committee will promote improvement in this field in the coming years.

Doctors also urged women to get regular physical examinations to elevate the early screening rate.

"There are more than 300,000 new breast cancer patients in the country each year. But even in Beijing, only 5 percent of the new patients are diagnosed through screening, not to mention other regions," Yin said.

Li Jinhui, general manager of Pfizer's tumor and rare disease business in China, said that the company will accelerate introducing new drugs into the country in the next decade and collaborate with the government, hospitals and other social sectors to facilitate standardized diagnosis and treatment of the disease to contribute to the Health China 2030 Initiative.

Xu Binghe, a leading breast cancer specialist at the Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, said: "Standardized use of such new therapies and a comprehensive disease management for post-surgery and post-therapy patients to reduce the incidence of complications are also very important to ultimately help patients live longer and better."