190,000 new cancers each year

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia registers more than 190,000 new cancer patients each year, and a fifth of these will die because they are incurable, a senior Ministry of Health employee said yesterday.

Director General for Medical Services Soeyoga was quoted by the Antara news agency as saying that the number of people in Indonesia who have cancer has increased dramatically in recent years, that cancer ranked as the sixth major fatal disease in 1992, up from 12th place in 1986.

The high fatality rate is chiefly caused by the fact that many people only learn they have cancer at a very late stage, Soeyoga said, adding that in such cases the only cure is for a "miracle" to happen.

He attributed the failure to detect cancer early to a combination of ignorance and mistrust towards modern medicine which still prevails among some members of the public.

In addition, medical treatment for cancer is very costly and does not always give the desired result, he added.

Soeyoga was speaking at a meeting of the West Java chapter of the Indonesian Cancer Foundation, which was also attended by Mrs. Karlina Umar Wirahadikusuma, the chairperson of the foundation. (emb)