CRI听力:Chinese Doctors Call for Healthy Lifestyle to Combat Cancer

Figures from the World Health Organization show there were over 3 million cancer cases in China in 2012, comprising some 20 percent of the world's total.

Some 2.2 million cancer patients died that year, making up 25 percent of the global cancer death toll.

It's estimated that the world's largest population will have 4 million cancer cases in the next five years with 3 million people being killed by the disease.

Shen Lin, vice director of the Beijing Research Center for the Prevention of Cancer, notes that the cancer situation in China is connected with the country's changing dietary habits.

"In the past due to the lower living standards, there was high morbidity of esophageal, gastric and liver cancer with a low morbidity of colorectal cancer. Now with the transformation of our lifestyle, there has been a rapid rise of colorectal cancer cases and other types of cancers that are common in developed nations."

Chinese nutrition experts note that Chinese people have dramatically increased their consumption of meat and have decreased consumption of grain-based foods over the last three decades.

Ji Jiafu, Chief of the Beijing Cancer Hospital, says that besides the changing dietary patterns, people's overall unhealthy lifestyles play an important part in driving up China's cancer morbidity.

"Smoking, excessive drinking, obesity as well as unhealthy dietary structure and lack of physical exercises, all these are important factors leading to chronic and metabolic diseases, including tumors and cancer."

Figures from the World Health Organization show over half of all men in China are smokers; and more than four in five adolescents do not engage in sufficient physical activity.

Severe pollution of air and water in some parts of the country has also been blamed for the rising number of cancer cases.

Many doctors agree that a balanced diet, regular physical exercise, and a healthy living environment are crucial in the fight against cancer.

For CRI, I'm Yin Xiuqi.