Even if you don’t smoke yourself, people often get lung cancer because of the smokers around them. According to a recent study, Indians are more at risk than residents of western countries.
Recently, doctors-researchers of Tata Memorial Hospital, a famous private hospital and medical research organization in India, made this claim in a recent research report. In the report titled ‘Uniqueness of Lung Cancer in Southeast Asia’, the researchers said that in Europe and the Western world, people who get lung cancer due to secondhand smoke, their cancer is usually diagnosed at the age of 54 to 70 years.
On the other hand, second-hand smokers in India are diagnosed with lung cancer, usually between the ages of 44 and 60. In other words, non-smoking Indians are diagnosed with lung cancer 10 years earlier than Westerners.
According to the research report, among the number of people diagnosed with cancer every year in Southeast Asian countries including India, lung cancer patients are on the third place. However, the death rate of patients with this cancer is much higher than other cancer patients. In 2020, 1.85 million lung cancer patients were diagnosed in Southeast Asia. 16 lakh 60 thousand of them died later.
Statistics on Indian lung cancer patients say that every year in India, a little more than 72 thousand 500 people are diagnosed with lung cancer. 66 thousand 279 people died among them.
A large proportion of Indian lung cancer patients are non-smokers and victims of second-hand smoke. Oncology (cancer treatment) department of Tata Medical Center Mumbai branch and oncologist Dr. Kumar Prabhas told the Times of India, “Every year, about 50 percent of the patients who are admitted to our hospital with lung cancer are non-smokers.”
However, it is not the case that Indian non-smokers are getting lung cancer only because of second-hand smoke. The terrible air pollution in the country’s big cities almost all year round is also one of the catalysts of lung cancer. Especially after the end of the monsoon season, until the next monsoon, there is a large amount of particulate matter (PM 2.5) in the air of major cities including the capital New Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Bengaluru. These particles enter the lungs with breathing and create a cancer environment.
Also, the number of lung cancer patients in India is still proportionally lower than in the western world. Dr. Kumar Prabhas said that 30 percent of every 1,000 cancer patients in the United States are lung cancer patients, while in India, the number of lung cancer patients is still 6 out of every 1,000 cancer patients.
