ABSTRACT
To find stimuli for
getting young students interested in the primary prevention of cancer and a
healthy lifestyle, internet resources have been searched that may motivate and
facilitate this study. Teachers interested in teaching this subject can
download for free and use them with the method felt as most appropriate; they
consist of text, graphs, tables, images, quizzes and an interactive atlas.
According to a personal experience, the use of these educational resources
helps teachers in teaching and students in learning about cancer prevention. According
to the World Health Organisation, cancer is a leading and growing cause of
mortality with 10 and 14 million new cases worldwide respectively in 2000 and 2012.
Several risk factors have been identified; if they are avoided, more than 30%
of the cancers can be prevented. The five most important modifiable risk
factors, among many others, are: smoking, alcohol, overweight, physical
inactivity, low consumption of vegetables and fruit. Cancer may also have
genetic causes or be related to certain infections that are more common in some
areas than in others. According to
several documents also quoted in this article, numerous behaviours that reduce
cancer risk may, at the same time, help to prevent other important diseases. Some of the documents quoted here show the
very great difference in cancer incidence and mortality rates often existing
between different geographic areas. For example, prostate cancer incidence per 100,000
persons per year is 104.4 in New Zealand, and 3.9 in Chennai, India. Many
studies found an increase over time in the incidence of certain cancer types in
people that move from countries where their risk is low to countries where
their risk is high, thus suggesting the important
role of environmental changes and lifestyle. As an example of this, the
risk of breast cancer among Hispanic women migrating to US increases with the
duration of residence in the immigration country, and becomes up to 4 - 6 times
higher after 3 or more generations. This
provides an example of what can happen in transitioning countries as a
consequence of some lifestyle changes, unless measures are taken.