ESMO collaborates with the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to support their development of an online learning platform which integrates research for cancer prevention in one easy-to-access point. The World Cancer Report Updates learning platform offers freely accessible learning material, based on selected content from the World Cancer Report - the most important resource on cancer prevention published by the IARC every five years.
About the IARC World Cancer Report
The IARC 2020 World Cancer Report: Cancer Research for Cancer Prevention, notes that cancer is the ‘first or second cause of premature death (ages 30-69) in 134 of 183 countries’.
According to the IARC Global Cancer Observatory cancer is expected to increase from 2018 to 2040, from an incidence of 18.1 million to 29.5 million with growth in the number of deaths from 9.6 million to 16.4 million.
The Key Take Away from the IARC World Cancer Report is that prevention offers the most cost-effective long-term strategy for the control of cancer.
The IARC World Cancer Report offers a wealth of knowledge including ‘the most comprehensive overview of relevant research available to date, ranging from descriptive etiology, cellular and molecular biology, toxicology and pathology through to behavioural and social science.
Chapters include discussions on the impact of inequalities in cancer, vaccination and screening, genomic individual susceptibility to cancer and the finer identification of those at risk, which may allow ‘precision cancer prevention’. The section on ‘inequalities that affect cancer prevention’ is new in the 2020 edition and explains how socioeconomic inequalities can limit cancer prevention impact.
The IARC report is complemented by other publications such as the WHO Classification of Tumours series (also known as the WHO Blue Books); the IARC volumes of “Cancer Incidence in Five Continents”, and the associated GLOBOCAN database document data on incidence, prevalence, mortality, and trends for multiple cancer types accessible online through the IARC Global Cancer Observatory.
The IARC report provides the most up-to-date science on cancer, and was published at the same time as the WHO 2020 Report on Cancer: setting priorities, investing wisely and providing care for all which indicates how that science can be translated into public policies.
The WHO and IARC reports provide a reliable resource for ESMO members for evidence-based data on the burden of cancer, its prevention, and public policy recommendations governments and health authorities can implement to save lives.