- HAIL: There are a total of 12,329 cancer patients in the Kingdom about 74 percent of whom are Saudis, local daily Al-Watan reported yesterday quoting an official statistical report issued by the Health Ministry's program to fight the disease.
Supervisor of the program Dr. Ali Al-Wadaie said the average age of male cancer patients is 59 while for women it is 50.
He said the ministry, early this year, had launched a number of awareness, preventive and training programs for the early detection of the disease whose rates have increased locally and internationally.
According to Dr. Al-Wadaie, the five regions with most cancer cases were Riyadh, the Eastern Province, Tabuk, Makkah and Madinah.
He said the most common types of cancer in the Kingdom were the breast, the colon, lymphatic, blood, liver, lungs, stomach, prostrate, thyroid gland and skin cancers.
The supervisor said Hail tops all the regions of the Kingdom in the number of prostate and thyroid gland cancers. He expected the number of deaths caused by cancer worldwide to rise to 13.1 million in the year 2030 from 7.6 million in 2008.
