Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    MILLIONS of viewers have been moved to tears while watching “Go Away Mr. Tumor,” which is about a cartoonist dying from cancer. It has been at the top of the Chinese box office for weeks.

    To coincide with the movie, a Shenzhen hospital opened a cancer screening center Thursday to help residents detect cancer before symptoms appear.

    About 3 million Chinese are found to have cancer every year and one Chinese citizen is diagnosed with cancer every 15 minutes. One dies from cancer every five minutes in China, statistics show. In Shenzhen, the number of people diagnosed with cancer has been rising at an annual rate of 4.15 percent. Last year, 16,731 Shenzhen residents were found to have cancer, an average of 45 every day.

    About 90 percent of these people have late-stage cancer, and are unlikely to live.

    If discovered in time, 60 percent to 90 percent of cancer victims can be cured, according to the World Health Organization.

    To give residents a chance to detect the disease early, Shenzhen People’s Hospital established the cancer screening center, which can screen for five types of cancer: lung cancer, gastric cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer and breast cancer.

    “Cancer screening is good for both individuals and society,” said Qiu Chen, president of the hospital. “Early detection can help cure the disease, or prolong the lifespan of a patient, and relieve financial pressure on families and society.”

    The hospital warned that people who are at high risk of developing cancer, such as heavy smokers, or people with a family history of cancer, should be screened regularly.