Today is World Cancer Day.  The day set aside to create awareness on cancer and to encourage its prevention, detection, and treatment.

Ghanaians have been urged to adopt healthy life styles and undertake regular screening for cancers including self breast examinations.

This would help eliminate some of the myths and misconception on cancers and reduce the incidence of death as result of late reporting and accessing of health care services.

Dr. Kofi Mensah Nyarko, National Cancer Control Focal Person, made the call in a release copied to GNA in Accra in connection with World Cancer Day celebration on Thursday, February 4.

The theme for 2010 World Cancer Day is: "CANCER CAN BE PREVENTED TOO" and focuses on simple measures to prevent cancer such as: no tobacco use, a healthy diet and regular exercise, limited alcohol use and protection against cancer-causing infections such as Hepatitis B virus infection.

This year's campaign aims at raising awareness of the fact that the risk of developing cancer can potentially be reduced by 40 per cent through simple lifestyle changes and other control measures such as vaccination, regular physical activity, eating healthily, limiting alcohol consumption, and avoiding tobacco as well as a comprehensive and well coordinated national initiative that focuses on key risk factors.

"The campaign is protection against cancer causing infections, focusing on the viral, bacterial and parasitic infections that can lead to cancer," it said.

Cancer is the abnormal growth of cells in any part of the body that mostly leads to death if not diagnosed early and treated.

Cancers are illnesses that are often chronic, debilitating, associated with grief and economic loss.

Each year, over 12 million people receive cancer diagnosis and 7.6 million die of the disease.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that worldwide, 84 million people would die of cancer between 2005 and 2015 without intervention.

Cancer constitutes about 12 per cent of all deaths worldwide.

In developing countries, cancer is among the three leading causes of death in adults.

The release said the major cancers in Ghana were breast, cervical, prostate, liver, stomach, blood cancers and childhood cancer as increasing numbers of young people develop the disease.

Some of the early warning signs are lumps and swellings, ulcers that fail to heal, abnormal bleeding, persistent indigestion and chronic hoarseness of voice.

Approximately 40 per cent of cancers are potentially preventable and it is expected that another 30 per cent of patients would have complete recovery if detected early by various simple screening methods or tests.

The release said there was hope for patients diagnosed in the late stage as there were various types of treatment such as radiotherapy, chemotherapy, surgery, hormonal therapy, or some combination of these.