Cancer kills more than seven million people a year throughout the world. This is more than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined, and African countries - which carry a large part of the burden - are the least able of all developing countries to cope with the challenges it presents, says a consortium of international cancer organisations.

Seeing a simple idea and "storing it because you never know when you'€™re going to use it" is what led to University of Cape Town (UCT) lecturer Dr George Vicatos to design a device which has saved a 18 year old cancer patient'€™s leg. A Senior Lecturer at UCT'€™s Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vicatos and his team worked against the clock to design the endo-prosthetic replacement for  part of the patient's femur and knee.

Cancer cases worldwide are likely to rise by nearly three-quarters by 2030, partly because other diseases are being stamped out and more developing countries are adopting Western lifestyles linked to cancer.

New research has shown that second-hand smoke is even more dangerous than previously thought. A team of researchers led by Dr AK Rajasekaran of the Nemours Centre for Childhood Cancer Research found that a key protein involved in cell function and regulation is stopped hampered by a substance present in cigarette smoke.

In 2010, the tobacco industry made US$6 000 in profit for each death caused by the products they sell. This is according to The Tobacco Atlas, Fourth Edition, and its companion website TobaccoAtlas.org, which were recently unveiled by the American Cancer Society and World Lung Foundation at the 15th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health.

The first detailed study to estimate the global impact of cancer has revealed that nearly 170 million years of healthy life were lost in 2008 because of the disease.