JAKARTA In the past few years, the phenomenon of young people suffering from cancer is increasingly being heard. It turns out that this phenomenon not only occurs in Indonesia, but also globally.
Singer Vidi Aldiano is still battling kidney cancer who was diagnosed in December 2019. When this news was first announced, the public was quite surprised. Understandably, Vidi’s age is still relatively young. He was only 29 years old when he was first diagnosed with kidney cancer.
Apart from Vidi Aldiano, there are several other public names of figures who also suffer from cancer at a young age, namely James van der Beek, Olivia Munn, and Kate Middleton, who recently gave shocking news about her illness.
According to a number of experts, there is no definite cause why many young people have cancer.
“We only recommend those who are 30 years old to do screening,” said Dr. John Marshall of Universitastama told USA Today.
Marshall is a senior oncologist. At the beginning of his career, he admitted that he had never had patients under 50 years old. But now the group is about half of the patients, most of whom are in their 30s and 40s.
Cases of breast cancer, colon cancer or colorectal, and other types of cancer have increased in people in their 20s to 40s.
Over the past 10 years, cases of colorectal cancer among people aged 25 to 49 have increased in 24 countries, including the UK, United States, France, Australia, Canada, Norway, and Argentina.
This surprising and alarming finding was conveyed at the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) congress in Geneva in September 2024.
Researchers from the American Cancer Society and the International Agency for WHO Cancer Research survey data from 50 countries to understand these trends. Interestingly, there is an increasing trend of cancer sufferers in young adult groups in 14 countries. While the trend of cases in adults is relatively stable.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) noted, in 2022, cancer sufferers in Indonesia will reach 136 people per 100 thousand population. This places Indonesia in eighth place as the country with the most cancer patients in Southeast Asia, while Asia is at number 23.
Breast cancer, lung cancer, and cervical cancer are still the three most common types of cancer in the country.
This fact encourages oncology doctor dr. Jeffry Beta Tenggara, SpPD-KHOM, said that the number of cancer sufferers in Indonesia is quite worrying.
There are still many lung cancers, which are getting higher. Indeed, the number is still number one breast, but lung cancer and service cancer seem to want a rival to fight for number two, number three, or number four with intestinal cancer,” said Jeffry.
Furthermore, according to Jeffry, cancer does not always attack the elderly. This malignant cell can also attack children or adolescents, as has happened in recent years. He explained that there are several factors that can cause a person to suffer from cancer, namely genetics, lifestyle, and factors X.
Cancer now does not look at the age of the sufferer, so no matter how much a person is still potentially cancer, according to dr.Jeffry. Even those who anticipate in a healthy lifestyle, such as not smoking and drinking alcohol, still have the potential to get cancer.
Even so, dr.Jeffry hopes that the X factor referred to as one of the causes of cancer will not be a benchmark for many people’s lives.
“But don’t let this be a benchmark that, oh people who live a healthy life can get cancer, why am I living a healthy life,” explained dr.Jeffry.
The Indonesian Cancer Foundation (YKI) also highlighted the increase in cancer patients at a young age. One of the reasons, said YKI General Chair Prof. Dr. dr. Aru Wicaksono Sudoyo is lifestyle.
“Actually, 90 percent of cancer is a risk factor in the lifestyle and habit and we are entering an era where there are more cancer causes,” said dr. Aru.
Doctor Aru also highlighted two other things that caused cancer cases to increase. First, medical tools to treat cancer are somewhat more developed so that they can detect diseases more quickly. That way, the number of cases found is increasing.
Other factors are an easy environment, way of eating, and lifestyle. Doctor Aru gave an example of how ancient parents more met nutritional needs with donations and fruits, as well as food without preservatives.
But the opposite is happening today, where various fast foods are easy to get by shaking their fingers.
Because our lifestyle is now more to the west and we are getting cancer faster. For example, colon cancer used to be under 40 at only 10 percent now 30 percent,” he said.
Lack of exercise also triggers a person to be more easily exposed to cancer. This can be seen from the habits of today’s people who prefer to use a vehicle rather than walk, even though the distance traveled is not too far.
“We know that the food factor alone has taken a risk factor of approximately 35 percent, cigarettes 30 percent. Lack of exercise, take a place too, so indeed our world is easier to get cancer than our previous ones,” he said.
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