More funds needed for cancer tests

CHANGCHUN - Chinese experts have urged health authorities to promote early lung cancer screening more forcefully in the country, as currently only 5 percent of sufferers are detected at an early stage.

Lung cancer, which kills more than 600,000 people on the mainland each year, is the top killer of all kinds of cancer in China. About 87 percent of Chinese patients with the disease will die within five years of being diagnosed, Zhi Xiuyi, director of the Lung Cancer Treatment Center at Capital Medical University, said during an address to the 5th China-Japan-Korea Workshop on Lung Cancer, which was held over the weekend.

"Actually, many of the deaths could be prevented or at least delayed by high-risk group early screenings, particularly by low-dose CT scans, which can detect lung cancers at their earliest stage, when more than 90 percent of patients can be cured," Zhi said.