J Ferlay

..9%). The most common causes of death from cancer were lung cancer (342,000 deaths, 19.9% of the total), colorectal cancer (212,000 deaths, 12.3%), breast cancer (129,000, 7.5%) and stomach cancer (117,000, 6.8%)...

..Political will and advocacy to invest in healthcare infrastructure and human resources to improve service delivery and accessibility are vital to reduce the current burden in low- and medium-resource countries...

..7%) and liver cancer (696,000 deaths, 9.2%). Cancer is neither rare anywhere in the world, nor mainly confined to high-resource countries. Striking differences in the patterns of cancer from region to region are observed...

..Our results indicate the potential impact of preventive practices. It is estimated that 20% of all cancer deaths (1 million) could be prevented by eliminating tobacco smoking. Infectious agents account for a further 16% of deaths...

..The implications of these patterns for cancer control, and specifically prevention, are discussed. Tobacco smoking and chewing are almost certainly the major preventable causes of cancer today...

..Monitoring the evolution of the cancer burden in Europe is of great value. Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe have been published for 2004 and estimates are now being presented for cancer incidence and mortality in Europe for 2006...

..Mammography screening and menopause hormone therapy is essentially offered to women 50-69 years old...

..Since 1985 considerable changes have taken place in the early detection and treatment of breast cancer. We quantified breast cancer trends for 35 countries with populations mainly of European ancestry...

..In particular, there is a clear urgency to combat the ongoing tobacco epidemic, now prevalent in much of Europe, particularly in the Eastern countries...

..The increase in mortality observed in the Baltic region and in several Central and Eastern European countries appear to reflect a real increase in risk and requires further monitoring...

..Most of the international variation is due to exposure to known or suspected risk factors related to lifestyle or environment, and provides a clear challenge to prevention...

..Those data that are available generally refer to the mid-1990s and are of limited use for cancer control planning. We present estimates of the cancer burden in Europe in 2004, including data for the (25 Member States) European Union...

..The model-based approach is therefore, at least in the case of India, incorrect. Established practice is to use real data to validate theoretical models, not to reject the data if apparently the model does not fit...