Every year, doctors detect cancer at early stages in tens of thousands of people in the Czech Republic. This is made possible through screening programs, which people are more willing to participate in due to their personal experiences with the disease among family members.
However, those who take part in such programs still do not represent the majority. At the same time, the number of cancer patients is rising, and according to doctors, one in three, or even one in two Czechs, has encountered cancer in their family.
“I would say that about one in three people in the Czech Republic has this experience,” says Ladislav Dušek, a leading Czech health statistician and head of the Institute for Health Information and Statistics.
Of the 6 million working-age citizens, about 1.1 million have suffered from or died due to the disease in the past.
In a survey conducted by the largest health insurance company in the Czech Republic, 52% of respondents mentioned cancer in their family. One-third of these were offered to undergo preventive screening as part of national programs. However, a significant portion of people still does not participate in programs that can detect cancer in its early stages.
This is likely due in part to the fact that half of the people surveyed are unaware of what screening involves, according to the survey.
However, the data shows that early detection of cancer can save lives or extend them for years.
“In the last five years, breast cancer screening has saved 25,000 lives and prevented suffering for women and mothers, the majority of whom did not have to undergo treatment thanks to early diagnosis,” emphasized Dušek. In the last five years, doctors managed to detect colorectal cancer in nearly 90,000 people.
“And in the first nine months of prostate cancer screening, we registered about 107,000 men who participated, and 99% of them continued with further examination when suspicious signs were found. 8.7% of them showed risky signs, which is very concerning,” Dušek reported a few weeks ago.
