Cancer rates on the rise

Poor diagnosis and a lack of trained medical staff are barriers to the proper treatment. Liu Zhihua reports on the illness which has seen a spike in cases over the past decade.

When Zhang Qing started to work at the Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the early 1990s, "cancer" was a strange word to most people. Many could not tell the difference between a tumor and a cancer, recalls the oncologist.

Now the situation has changed.