DAR-ES-SALAAM '€“ While several African countries are making progress in implementing smokefree laws, nearly 90 percent of people on the continent remain without meaningful protection from secondhand smoke.

In South Africa, cervical cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women. It kills about 3 400 women every year. The good news is that cervical cancer is preventable and curable if detected early.

Pat McKenny never considered having a pap smear, in fact the thought of cervical cancer simply never crossed the mother of three'€™s mind.

People with albinism are advised to protect themselves from the sun as they are at most risk of developing skin cancer.

One in 27 women is diagnosed with breast cancer every year in South Africa. Women are advised to follow a simple precautionary procedure in order to detect the cancerous growth early.

A retreat from international funding commitments for AIDS threatens to undermine the dramatic gains made in reducing AIDS-related illness and death in recent years, according to a new report by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).The MSF report highlights how expanding access to HIV treatment has not only saved the lives of people with AIDS but has been central to reducing overall mortality in a number of high HIV burden countries in southern Africa in recent years.

By next year cancer is set to be the biggest killer in the world, killing more people than HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria combined. Dr John Seffrin is Chief Executive Officer of the American Cancer Society (ACS), the world'€™s largest voluntary health organisation fighting cancer. In an interview with Health-e News Service he spoke about the challenges facing Africa.

The Tobacco Atlas is viewed as a critical weapon against tobacco. Along with detailed tobacco statistics on nearly every country around the globe, the publication offers in-depth information on the prevalence of tobacco and health, the costs of tobacco, the tobacco trade throughout the world, how tobacco is promoted and marketed, and the tobacco control efforts already under way.

Over 8 000 gynaecologists and obstetricians recently met in Cape Town where Professor Joanna Cain, a passionate voice on women cancers spoke of the world facing an historic opportunity to control and one day eliminate cervical cancer, one of the biggest killers of poor women.

The cancer burden is rising rapidly in Africa with around 650 000 people developing the disease annually while treatment remains largely unavailable or inaccessible. Next week stakeholders will gather in Tanzania under the banner of the African Organisation for Research & Training in Cancer (AORTIC) to find ways to curb the more than 500 000 cancer deaths annually.

Over 4000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year in South Africa and more than half of them die. According to the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA) these numbers could be reduced if more men were screened.