TESTS FOR A PRIZE: To encourage more women to take the tests, the Taipei government and a cancer foundation are offering prize scratch cards from Aug. 1 to Nov. 30

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 28, 2020
By: Lee I-chia / Staff reporter

Breast cancer and cervical cancer were the second and 14th-most common causes of death due to cancer in Taipei last year, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday, urging female residents to undergo government-funded cancer screening tests regularly.

Breast cancer has the highest incidence rate among women who have cancer in Taiwan, with the 2017 national cancer registry report showing that 13,965 women were diagnosed with the disease that year, which translates to about 38 women per day, Formosa Cancer Foundation chief executive officer Lai Gi-ming (賴基銘) said.

“Getting a mammogram is effective for detecting precancerous breast lesions and cancer, and if breast cancer is diagnosed at an early stage [stage 1 or stage 2] and treated, the five-year survival rate can be as high as 90 percent,” he said.

A total of 110,650 residents received the free mammograms last year, up 10.86 percent from the year before, Taipei Department of Health Commissioner Huang Shier-chieg (黃世傑) said.
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