(Asian News Hub) – Cancer is one of the leading causes of death, but during the pandemic physicians and health-care providers have noticed a steep decline in new diagnoses.
“You wonder where some of these cancers are. Some of them are missing in action,” said Dr. Antoine Eskander, a surgical oncologist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Canada.
“We don’t know where they are. We’ve seen a drop in cancer incidence rates, despite there being a very steady rate of cancers being diagnosed in Ontario over the last three, four, five, 10 years.”
Part of the problem is people aren’t going to their doctors to get checked or screened, out of fear of getting sick with COVID-19. By the time they do show up, experts say, their cancers are at a far more advanced stage.
A recent U.S. study found nearly 10 million cancer screenings failed to happen in 2020 because of the pandemic.
The study, published in JAMA Oncology, examined the three cancers for which early screenings are critical: breast, colorectal and prostate. All three declined sharply, but the most significant was a 90 per cent decline in breast cancer screenings in April 2020.
One of the authors is Dr. Ronald Chen, chair of the department of radiation oncology at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
“As a physician, I wasn’t surprised to see that screenings had declined, but this study measures by how much,” Chen said during a news conference. “This study makes it clear that this is a large public health issue.”
With inputs from Agencies
