Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    SHENZHEN residents who have lived in the city for at least three years and are between the ages of 40 and 74 are eligible to join a free cancer screening project that will start soon.

    Shenzhen’s Chronic Disease Prevention and Control Center and the city’s only cancer hospital, Shenzhen Hospital of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Cancer Hospital, are initiating the project, which will require eligible residents to first complete a questionnaire. Based on the questionnaires, doctors will select people with the highest risk of having cancer for further diagnosis, which will be free of charge, the hospitals said Friday.

    Cancer has been the top killer of Shenzhen residents since 2009, the center found. A total of 19,923 Shenzhen residents were found to have tumors last year, compared with 20,400 in 2015 and 18,547 in 2014, said Peng Ji, director at the center.

    Among them, 9,099 were male while 10,824 were female. About 182 of every 100,000 Shenzhen residents were found to have cancer last year, compared with 194 in 2015 and 179 in 2014. The center said that the rate was lower than the national average.

    Lung cancer remained as the top killer among tumor-related deaths in Shenzhen last year, followed by colorectal cancer, the center said.

    Lung cancer was the top killer for male residents in Shenzhen, while breast cancer was the top killer for female residents. Thyroid cancer became the No. 2 cause of death among women.

    The number of Shenzhen residents diagnosed with tumors grew at an annual rate of 4.15 percent between 2000 and 2013, and nearly 70 percent of the deaths from tumors were due to late diagnosis, according to Peng.

    “Early detection is the key to successful treatment,” said Peng. “We hope through the project people will have higher awareness of cancer and healthy life styles as one-third of cancer can be avoided through healthy living.”

    The center hopes the project will bring knowledge about cancer to at least 60 percent of Shenzhen residents by 2020 and reduce the rate of cigarette use to less than 15 percent.