RIYADH, 22 April — A top Saudi specialist has said that around 7,000 new cancer cases are reported each year in the Kingdom, half of which are incurable, newspapers reported yesterday.
Adnan Ezzat, head of the Tumors Department at King Faisal Specialist Hospital, the main public health facility for cancer treatment, told Al-Jazirah newspaper that the hospital treated 47,158 cancer patients since 1975.
Many others are believed to have received treatment either in private hospitals in the Kingdom or abroad.
Ezzat said half of the cancer patients received by the hospital normally respond to treatment, while the rest usually arrive in advanced condition and are complicated to treat.
The hospital filed a lawsuit in Riyadh’s Grand Islamic Court in late November against tobacco firms and their agents, demanding initial damages of $2.9 billion for treating smoking-related diseases mainly cancer.
The Kingdom has one of the highest smoking rates in the world despite having hiked customs duty on cigarettes to 100 percent.
