Detected cases of "silent killer" on the rise (The New Age)
Diagnosed cases of breast cancer rose by 260% and those of cervical cancer by 20% from 1980 to 2010, with the biggest hikes occurring in developing countries, according to global estimates reported on Thursday in The Lancet.
 Identified cases of breast cancer around the world rose from around 640,000 in 1980, when 65% occurred in rich countries, to 1.6 million in 2010, of which 51 percent were among women in developing nations.
Incidence of cervical cancer increased from 378,000 annually to 454,000 during this period, according to the survey of 187 countries.
Breast cancer killed 425,000 women in 2010, of whom 68,000 were aged 15 to 49 in developing countries.
Mortality from cervical cancer has been declining, but still killed 200,000 last year, 46,000 of them women aged 15-49 in the poorer economies.
The rise in incidence stems in part from better diagnosis but also from ageing, as a bulge in the world's population reaches the age when the risk of cancer increases.
The analysis is compiled by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Elephantiasis sufferer beats the odds (The New Age)
Elephantiasis sufferer Nana Ntombela, who has been confined to her bed for the past two years, was ecstatic when she put her feet on the sand of Margate beach on Friday for the first time in five years.
Ntombela, a 37-year-old mother, developed the disease in 2006. Over time her leg grew to a circumference of more than 1.5m.
Her condition was so severe that she couldn’t leave home or get out of bed and relied on her family, especially her husband Sandile, for everything.
Elephantiasis is characterised by extreme enlargement of a limb where the skin usually develops a thickened, pebbly appearance and may become ulcerated and darkened.
It results from an obstruction of the lymph flow and possibly of blood circulation.
Known as the “elephant woman” in her hometown of Gcilima, in Margate, moving her in bed took as many as nine people.
Until five months ago, Nana had lost all hope that she would ever lead a normal life. Then Netcare Sunninghill Hospital offered her treatment and surgery free of charge.
It took extensive surgery and three physiotherapists to help restore her leg. Speaking at an emotional farewell at the hospital on Thursday evening, she said the first thing she wanted to do was go to the beach.
And that’s what she did. “We arrived in Margate and what I thought was going to be a quiet visit turned out to be a public spectacle. I was on crutches on the sand and when people saw me, they asked about my recovery.”
“I am now home, I can be a wife and a mother, I can be counted among the productive beings in society.”
Nana will visit a Margate hospital once a month to check on progress and will return to Sunninghill in Januray for a check-up.

Chinese condoms ‘too small’ for South Africans (The New Age)
A South African court has blocked the government from buying 11 million Chinese condoms, saying they are too small, a newspaper reported Friday.
The finance ministry had awarded a contract to a firm called Siqamba Medical, which planned to buy the Phoenurse condoms from China, the Beeld newspaper said.
A rival firm, Sekunjalo Investments Corporation, turned to the High Court in Pretoria after losing the bid, arguing that their condoms were 20 percent larger than the Chinese ones.
Judge Sulet Potterill blocked the deal with Siqamba, ruling that the condoms were too small, made from the wrong material, and were not approved by the World Health Organisation, the paper said.
South Africa has more HIV infections than any country in the world, with 5.38 million of its 50 million people carrying the virus.