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Voice Off: Liver Cancer Statistics, a Gapminder video with Hans Rosling.
Hans Rosling: It is easy to understand the occurrence of liver cancer in different countries
of the world if you look at statistics in Gapminder World. You come to our website,
you go to this graph here, and you click. The start graph shows one bubble for each
country. The size is population, and on the vertical axis is life expectancy and at the
horizontal axis is income per person in the countries. But, to first look at cancer, I
suggest you click on 'Map.' Then all the country bubbles will go back on the map to where the
country is situated. And you can see that the color represents the continent.
Now, as you see it, the size is population. You can expand this map by clicking on Full
Screen. And we can change to show the number of cases of liver cancer in each country by
going to Indicator, I go into Health, and then to Cancer, Liver and liver cancer, number
of new male cases. It's very dramatic. Most of the cases are
in China and neighboring countries in East Asia, the red bubbles. Is that because China
has such a big population? No, it can't be because India has a much smaller bubble. It
is more rare, liver cancer among men in India. So, we need to also look at the number of
new cases per 100,000 population, that is, the rate. And you have to go back to the shot.
You click on the horizontal axis here, go to health, to cancer of the liver, and liver
cancer new cases per 100,000 male. Click, and very soon you can see that the countries
who are high up, have the higher risk of getting liver cancer for the men. And the size of
the bubble shows how many get it. We can also focus by taking away the outliers
here and look over most of the countries. Look here, here we see high levels we find
in countries in Eastern Asia and in Sub-Saharan Africa. Countries like Rwanda, like Guinea,
like Mali, and China. And lots of wealthy countries like Japan and South Korea.
The reason is that the main cause of liver cancer is chronic infection with Hepatitis
B, a virus that mainly is transmitted from mother to child, but it can also be transmitted
with blood from one person to another, and also by *** contact.
Now, it so happens that since many centuries back, the virus has been common in East Asia
and in Africa. The reason for that is not well known. We just know that they continue
to be transmitted there; and if the country grows richer, it doesn't decrease automatically.
And how much is it in women? You can click here on the income axis, the horizontal axis
and then instead of income, we can show cancer, liver, and number of new cases per 100,000
women. You will see that, like in China, the 14 new cases in women per 100,000 and 38 in
men, it's more common in men. The probable cause of that is that consumption of alcohol
is a contributing cause of this cancer. Now, a very tragic aspect of this cancer is
that it is difficult to cure. If I take away this rate for men here, and instead I show
you for cancer of the liver, the number of death per 100,000 women, you will see in China
it is estimated at about 14 women per 100,000 that get it, and it is about 13 per 100,000
that die. Very difficult to treat, but the good news
is that this cancer can be prevented if you stop the transmission of Hepatitis B and also
if you reduce the consumption of alcohol. You can stop transmission of Hepatitis B by
giving a special treatment to pregnant women or by vaccinating the population. Still, these
actions remain slightly costly. Now, if you want to look at some special country
you can focus down to these countries by doing like this, you zoom in and then you can choose
the country from the list here. Let me show you how I find my own country, Sweden here.
And I can see how much liver cancer is there. This is how you can look at the cancer statistics.
And the source, that is IARC. IARC is the powerhouse of cancer statistics in the world,
an institute in Lyon in France that links to the World Health Organization, and where
work the best specialists on cancer statistics. They compile the data in the best possible
way and we have been able to show you some of their great work. Thank you.