Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    THOSE who think they may have cancer can join a free screening project that kicked off at the city’s only cancer hospital in Longgang on Friday.

    Any resident who has lived in the city for at least three years and is aged between 40 and 74 is eligible to join the project, which will be carried out in 117 community clinics and 10 hospitals.

    Those who are interested can bring their identification cards or passports to register with one of the 117 community clinics by filling in a questionnaire about their life style and medical record. Based on the questionnaires, doctors will select 5,000 people with the highest risk of having cancer for further diagnosis free of charge at the 10 hospitals, which include Luohu District People’s Hospital, and Southern Medical University Shenzhen Hospital, 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, according to a press conference Friday.

    The project mainly screens for five types of cancer — lung cancer, colorectal cancer, upper gastrointestinal cancer, breast cancer and liver cancer.

    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, official figures showed.

    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 Ji, a director of the chronic disease center.