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Treatment
The primary objectives of cancer treatment are cure, prolongation of life, and improvement of the quality of life.
An national cancer control programme should therefore establish guidelines for integrating treatment resources with programmes for screening and early diagnosis, and provide therapeutic standards for the most important cancers in the country.
Treatment may involve surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, or some combination of these. The most advanced forms of treatment may produce a 5-year survival rate of 75% or more for certain types of cancer, e.g. cancer of the uterine corpus, breast, testis, and melanoma. By contrast, survival rates in cancer of the pancreas, liver, stomach, and lung are generally less than 15%.
Some treatments require sophisticated technology that is available only in locations with substantial resources. Since the cost of establishing and maintaining such facilities is high, it is desirable that they should remain concentrated in relatively few places in a country to avoid draining resources that could valuably be devoted to other aspects of the work of an national cancer control programme.
Related links
These are external links to organizations and institutions in related areas of work.
The provision of a link from the WHO website to other sites does not indicate endorsement of those sites by WHO, and WHO accepts no responsibility for the validity or accuracy of their content.
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UN International Atomic Energy Agency: fighting cancer through radiotherapy
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US National Cancer Institute: cancer treatment
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