The most important point under primary prevention of cancer is imparting proper education to people about factors that can lead to cancer. This knowledge is woefully lacking in our country even amongst the educated people, leave aside the village folks. The writing of this book is a step in this direction.
The aim of imparting this education is to make people aware of the dangers that they run when they expose themselves to cancer-causing agents.
The following are some of the clearly preventable cancers.
Oral Cancer
Oral cancer is a typically preventable, detectable and treatable cancer and yet one of the most prevalent in India.
That tobacco and its products can give rise to cancer inside the mouth was first pointed out in 1915. The doctor who made such an observation wrote: The worst cancer of the tongue I have recently seen was in a woman. All the left half of the tongue and the half of the right, was cancerous. I asked her how it began and she said: ‘I have all my life, taken a small tooth brush in my right hand, dipped it in snuff (containing tobacco powder) and rubbed it hard on my tongue on the left.”
The incidence of mouth cancer is the highest in India, mainly because of the widely-prevalent habit of chewing tobacco. Mouth cancer forms one-third of all the cancer cases in India. In other countries, its incidence is much less: USSR 4.6 per cent, UK 4.27 per cent, USA 3.4 per cent, Japan 2.6 per cent, Scandinavian countries 2.5 per cent.
Those who are in the habit of chewing tobacco daily, run eight times more risk of developing mouth cancer than do the non-chewers. The risk is higher when chewing tobacco is started at an earlier age. A definite dose-effect relationship has also been observed. How long the quid is kept in the mouth is also relevant. It has been observed that some of the tobacco chewers keep tobacco in the mouth while they go to sleep; this increases greatly the risk of getting cancer. The risk increases further if the quid is kept only on one side.
If tobacco chewing can be controlled, there would be a substantial reduction of cancer.