Role of Public Health Agencies in Reducing Cancer and Promoting Health Awareness

Running Head: Healthcare
Healthcare
Essay
System04104
5/29/2019

Healthcare
1
Introduction
When people thinks about health and diseases, it has been observed that health is generally
considered by people as being a normal state and disease is considered as an abnormal state
in human health. Disease is normally treated by the physicians in order to provide a good
health to the people. However, nobody can ignore the societal approach and its systematic
views when people considered about the health of people (Sarfati, Koczwara, and Jackson,
2016). However, the role of social approaches is to consider the impact and cause of the
disease in specific dimension of society such as gender, race, ethnicity, social class, family,
etc. This essay considers the role of various social approaches about the cancer. Cancer is one
of the dangerous diseases all around the world, which is still a major problem for the society.
The role of society is so important in fighting with this dangerous disease, which is still non-
diagnosable in some countries and people face large number of problems in treatment of
cancer. These problems can be in the form of financial aspects, mental aspects, or social
aspects. This essay analyse all the social approaches and role of public healthcare agencies to
reduce the impact of cancer on society and promote the health awareness among people about
the cancer and it causes.
Incidence and Prevalence of Cancer
Cancer has a major impact on the society in UK and in other countries of the world as well.
There is a large numbers of people die every year from the cancer disease and it shows the
burden of cancer on the society and people (You, Wang, Yeung, and Lu, 2018). However,
cancer is one of the leading causes of death and every year large number of people diagnosed
with cancer. The number of cancer patients is growing every year with growing population.
The major causes of cancer are chemical foods, pollution, life style behaviours, and some
other environmental and natural factors. However, one third of cancer deaths are happening
because of poor life style and poor diet such as low fruit and vegetable intake, high body
mass index, tobacco use, alcohol use, and lack of physical exercise (Grossman, et. al., 2016).
Cancer is second leading cause of death globally and according to the World Health
Organisation (WHO), more than 9.6 million people died in 2018 because of cancer. In other
words, about one death in every six deaths is happens due to cancer. However, the major
problem is that most of the cancer cases found in low and middle-income countries. Cancer is

Healthcare
2
also responsible for inviting other health problems such as Hepatitis and human papilloma
virus (HPV). However, it has been seen that identification of cancer in early stages for the
people is difficult and late stage diagnosis or identification of the disease causes major death
rates in people (WHO, 2018).
However, according to a report of WHO (2018) there are various types of cancers and these
types are the leading causes of death in people. The most common types of cancer are as
follow:
Lung cancer (2.09 million cases)
Stomach cancer (1.03 million cases)
Breast cancer (2.09 million cases)
Sin cancer (1.04 million cases)
Colorectal cancer (1.80 cases)
However, the major type of cancers that causes most numbers of deaths is lung cancers (1.16
million deaths), Breast cancer (627, 000 deaths), colorectal (862,000 deaths), liver cancer
(782, 000 deaths), and stomach cancer (783,000 deaths) (WHO, 2018).
Pattern of the disease and changes in society
It has been seen that most of deaths in cancer patients is found in the low and middle-income
countries. However, the large number of cancers and various types create problems for the
large health organisation to easily identifying the best method to diagnose and identify the
cancerous cells in the human body. The growing types of cancer and increasing number of
death are directly related with the people’s daily schedule and their behaviour in the life. The
use of chemicals in the agricultural plants to grow the food immediately and without season
may appear a major cause of cancer (You and Henneberg, 2018). Apart from this, the poor
schedule of human life, using alcohol and tobacco products, and lack in physical exercise
some of the cause that enables the cancerous cell to grow and spread in large population.
However, in the observation related to cancer, it has been seen that most of the people who
belong to low income countries and middle income count roes cannot afford the treatment
costs of cancer or even the second aspects is that in large number of cases people fail to
identify the disease in primary stage.