Banyak yang Menganggap Kanker Menular

(News Today) - Minimnya edukasi tentang kanker pada anak menimbulkan stigma keliru yang menghambat pergaulan mereka. Anggapan bahwa kanker menular dan tak terobati membuat mereka dikucilkan sehingga stigma tersebut harus dihentikan.

”Tidak hanya dijauhi teman- teman sebayanya. Bahkan, ada orangtua melarang anaknya bermain dengan anak penderita kanker,” kata Pembina Yayasan Kasih Anak Kanker Indonesia (YKAKI) Mardi Santosa di sela perayaan Hari Kartini, di Rumah Kita, Jakarta, Jumat (25/4).

Pada perayaan itu, sekitar 20 anak berkarnaval mengenakan pakaian daerah. Ada pula pertunjukkan tari anak penderita kanker yang penuh semangat dan keceriaan. Aktivitas itu memberikan semangat yang berdampak positif pada pengobatan.

Saat ini, kata Mardi, tak sedikit orang masih menganggap bahwa kanker adalah penyakit menular dan berbahaya bagi masyarakat di lingkungan anak penderita. Stigma itu berdampak buruk.

Pada awal berdiri tahun 2006, stigma itu pula yang sempat menghambat YKAKI menempati rumah petak yang dijadikan Rumah Kita di Jakarta. Warga sekitar menolak kehadiran anak-anak penderita kanker itu.

Ketua YKAKI Ira Soelistyo mengatakan, kini pihaknya punya program sosialisasi dan edukasi yang bertujuan memberikan informasi kepada masyarakat mengenai kanker pada anak. Program itu menyasar dokter-dokter umum di puskesmas, penggerak posyandu, dan penggerak pembinaan kesejahteraan keluarga (PKK).

Dokter-dokter umum di puskesmas merupakan garda depan penanganan kesehatan masyarakat. Oleh karena itu, mereka perlu informasi baik mengenai gejala kanker pada anak. ”Pengetahuan tentang gejala penting. Sebab, deteksi dini kanker pada anak memperbesar peluang kesembuhannya,” ujar Ira.

Kesembuhan

Kesembuhan kanker pada anak bisa mencapai 70 persen asalkan dideteksi dini, pengobatan konsisten, dan dirawat dengan baik. Semua tahapan itu sangat menentukan dalam pengobatan.

Pihak YKAKI juga melakukan penyuluhan kepada masyarakat. Masyarakat perlu tahu bahwa kanker anak berbeda dengan kanker pada orang dewasa, yang tingkat kematiannya tinggi.

Kanker yang banyak ditemukan pada anak ialah kanker darah (leukemia), kanker mata (retinoblastoma), dan kanker otak.

Data Organisasi Kesehatan Dunia (WHO), setiap tahun penderita kanker di dunia meningkat 6,25 juta orang, empat persen di antaranya anak-anak. Adapun 75-90 persen kanker pada anak tak diketahui penyebabnya. Di Indonesia, 150 dari 1 juta anak menderita kanker. Setiap tahun, 4.100 kasus baru.

Source : kompas

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'Landmark' cancer vaccine gets FDA approval

(News Terupdate) - A vaccine treatment for prostate cancer has become the first therapy of its kind to win approval for use in U.S. patients.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Provenge, a novel technique for fighting prostate cancer, on Thursday. The treatment involves taking a patient's own white blood cells and using a drug that trains them to more actively attack cancer cells.

"It's a landmark in the sense that it would be the first approved cell-based immune therapy," said Dr. Nina Bhardwaj, director of the tumor vaccine program at New York University Langone Medical Center, who is not involved with Provenge or its maker, Dendreon Corp.

The treatment is intended only for men with so-called "metastatic castration-resistant" prostate cancer, for whom hormone suppressant therapy has not worked. Studies have shown that Provenge prolongs survival by about four to 4.5 months.

But the real breakthrough is the approval of this new way of treating disease, which could be used for other cancers and conditions, such as HIV, Bhardwaj said.

"It's a major conceptual advance; it's a modest therapeutic advance," said Dr. Christopher Logothetis, prostate cancer researcher at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Logothetis testified to an FDA panel in 2007 about the drug, but has no financial ties to Dendreon.

It is unclear whether insurance companies will cover the cost of Provenge and it may be prohibitively expensive for some, Bhardwaj said. Dendreon says it will be priced similarly to other new biologics that prolong survival.

Investment firm J.P. Morgan estimates a full course of Provenge will cost $65,000; estimates by other investors put it between $50,000 and $100,000, according to J.P. Morgan. Cancer drugs Avastin and Erbitux, also based on new concepts in treating different kinds of cancer, cost up to $100,000 per year.

"In this whole scheme of things, [Provenge is] costly, but not unheard of," Bhardwaj said.

Provenge is the first cancer treatment vaccine that the FDA has approved.

Although Provenge is considered a vaccine, it is a treatment for patients who already have prostate cancer, rather than a preventive measure, said Dr. David Penson, assistant professor of urologic surgery at Vanderbilt University, who was an investigator in a Provenge clinical study and has presented the research, but has no financial ties to the company.

The Provenge process involves taking out some of the patient's white blood cells and sending them to a facility where they are activated with Provenge. The infusion is sent back, and a physician delivers it to the patient intravenously. A complete course of therapy takes three cycles in one month.

A phase 3 clinical trial called IMPACT, involving 512 men with castration-resistant prostate cancer, found that Provenge reduced the risk of death by 22.5 percent compared with a placebo.

The IMPACT study also found that the treatment extended the lives of patients by an average of 4.1 months; a separate trial with 225 men found an average life extension of 4.5 months. Clinical trials also found that 33 percent of patients with advanced disease remained alive three years after treatment with Provenge.

"This is a significant improvement in survival, and is more significant in that it is a new way of treating prostate cancer," said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, in an e-mail.

Brawley and Logothetis said they will prescribe the therapy for patients who fit the criteria.

Because the treatment makes use of the patient's own cells, it does not cause the severe side effects seen in chemotherapy, Penson said. The main side effects seen for Provenge were flu-like symptoms, such as chills and fever, lasting one to two days. Docetaxel, a chemotherapy drug that is the only available alternative for these patients, is toxic to the body, and can lead to infection, muscle and bone pain, and hair loss, he said.

Potentially, Provenge could one day be used in combination with chemotherapy, Penson said. Right now it is prostate-cancer specific, but the principle behind it may be applicable to other cancers, he said.

The treatment has had an long journey on the way to approval. An FDA advisory panel reviewed Provenge in 2007 and voted in favor of it, but the agency declined to approve it, requesting more data. Logothetis also recommended additional research at that time.

Concerns surrounded the drug because although the initial studies showed a survival benefit, they did not demonstrate a delayed progression of cancer, Logothetis said. Usually, both of these benefits are seen in proven cancer therapies.

"Since the traditional measures of efficacy are not seen in these studies, it has created initial skepticism," Logothetis said.

But given the survival benefit found in the later results, there is now little doubt that the treatment works, he said. The question is why it works without delaying tumor progression.

The results could mean that the drug resists negative effects of cancer rather than cancer growth, he said. Alternatively, the slowing of the tumor's growth may be too small to measure with available tools. It is also possible that the mechanism is entirely different, changing the tumor in some way that scientists do not yet understand.

Other promising research may have been stifled for similar reasons, Logothetis said.

"You can assume that many trials that would have been beneficial were stopped early because there was no effect on progression on the tumor," Logothetis said.

One concern now is capacity, because Dendreon's facilities initially won't be able to handle the demand, Logothetis said.

The company intends to make Provenge available through about 50 centers, all of which were approved clinical trial sites, and plans to expand its existing manufacturing facility in New Jersey, said Dendreon spokeswoman Katherine Stueland. The expansion should be done by early 2011, and the company is also building facilities in Los Angeles, California, and Atlanta, Georgia, which should be complete in mid-2011, she said.

Source : CNN

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CDC urges 50-state anti-smoking effort

(News Terupdate) - A coordinated national anti-smoking effort could reduce the more than 400,000 annual tobacco-related deaths in the United States, federal health officials said Thursday.

A new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers a snapshot of each state's tobacco control progress, including wider adoption of measures to control, prevent and stop smoking. The key, the report says, is having all the states adopt uniform tobacco control plans.

"From the numbers it's the leading preventable cause of death," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC. "As a doctor I have cared for people with cancer, with chronic lung disease, people who have to gasp for every breath, and I know that behind those numbers are people and lives. ...

"If states make the right decisions, if policymakers and families make the right decisions, we can save lives."

The CDC estimates that 46 million American adults smoke cigarettes, and smoking causes approximately 443,000 deaths each year. The CDC estimates that in 2004 smoking cost more than $96 billion in direct medical costs, $193 billion in annual health-related economic losses and more than $97 billion in annual lost productivity.

Overall, the report finds that smoking rates for American adults vary. States with the highest smoking rates include West Virginia with 26.5 percent, Indiana with 26 percent, Kentucky with 25.2 percent, Missouri with 25 percent and Oklahoma with 24.7 percent.

The lowest smoking states include Utah with 9.3 percent, California with 14 percent, New Jersey with 14.8 percent and Maryland with 14.9 percent.

In previous reports issued in 1999 and 2007, the CDC outlined strategies that are known to stop and prevent smoking, including raising the price of tobacco products, enacting smoke-free laws, cutting tobacco advertising and promotion while enacting anti-smoking media campaigns, limiting access to tobacco products and encouraging and offering assistance to smokers to quit.

In 2007, the Institute of Medicine, the medical branch of the National Academy of Sciences, released "Ending the Tobacco Problem: A Blueprint for the Nation," stating a goal of eliminating smoking as a public health problem in the United States. The strategies included strengthening and fully activating tobacco control methods similar to the CDC's plans, as well as tobacco regulation.

In 2008, the World Health Organization's MPOWER program outlined additional steps that complemented and reinforced the other agencies' recommendations.

As an example of the success of these strategies, the CDC cites the state of California, which has one of the oldest comprehensive tobacco control programs. California cut adult smoking rates from 22.7 percent in 1988 to 13.3 percent in 2006. That reduction in smoking accelerated the decline of heart disease deaths and lung cancer incidence in California, compared with the rest of the country.

In 2009, 14 states and the District of Columbia implemented an excise tax on cigarettes. Those state tax hikes followed a 62-cent federal cigarette tax hike instituted by Congress in April 2009.

Twenty-four states and D.C. have comprehensive smoke-free laws. Seven states do not have statewide smoke-free laws of any type: Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming.

While some progress has been made in getting more states to implement tobacco control measures, the report stresses that much more is still needed.

The CDC's Best Practices for Comprehensive Tobacco Control Programs 2007 noted that states could plan and enact tobacco control programs with a small percentage of tobacco excise tax revenues and funds from a 1998 agreement between states' attorneys general and the four largest tobacco companies.

The report concludes that putting uniform tobacco control policies in place would dramatically reduce the health and economic burden on states.

"The first step is knowledge, knowing what the issues are," Frieden said. "We need to act."

Source : CNN

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Rapper Guru dies after battle with cancer

(News Terupdate) - According to his friend and producer Solar, it was the love of the fans that helped keep rapper Guru going.

"I would read him the e-mails that would come in and play him the voicemails," Solar told CNN. "I really do believe that was part of the reason why he was able to go on as long as he did."

The 43-year-old rapper succumbed to complications from cancer on Monday at Good Samaritan Hospital near New York City, Solar said. There had been an outpouring of support from fans in March when it was reported Guru had a stroke and had been hospitalized.

Solar, a long-time collaborator of the artist, said Guru chose not to go public with the diagnosis of myeloma that was made more than a year ago.

"Guru has been in and out of hospitals since last July," Solar said. "It was his wishes to keep it private. We really thought he would be able to beat it."

Born Keith Elam, the rapper was well-respected in the industry for his rhyme style. He rose to fame in the 1980s as one half of the duo Gang Starr, in which he shared the spotlight with his partner, DJ Premier.

He later broke out and found solo success with his series of "Jazzmatazz" albums, where he combined hip-hop and jazz. His collaborations with jazz greats, including Branford Marsalis and Roy Ayers, helped cement Guru's reputation in the music industry.

Solar released a letter he said Guru had written to fans with instructions that it be distributed at the time of his death.

"As the sole founder of Gang Starr, I am very proud of what Gang Starr has meant to the music world and fans," the letters said. "I equally am proud of my Jazzmatazz series and as the father of Hip-Hop/Jazz. I am most proud of my leadership and pioneering efforts on Jazzmatazz 4 for reinvigorating the Hip-Hop/Jazz genre in a time when music quality has reached an all time low."

Jackie O. Asare, president and chief executive officer of 4Sight Media Relations, which formerly handled publicity for Guru, released a statement praising the rapper for his artistry.

"We honor Guru for leaving us with music that reaches into higher places, for coloring outside the lines of hip-hop, and recognizing the musical masters who inspired him," she said. "Through Guru's eyes, there was no division between hip-hop and jazz, hip-hop and neosoul, hip-hop and history."

Solar said he is sure Guru would much rather be remembered for his music than the controversy that surrounded him in his last days.

Before his death, there were reports that the producer was keeping Guru's family from visiting and speculation that he was controlling the ill rapper.

In the letter Solar says Guru wrote for his fans, it says: "I do not wish my ex-DJ [DJ Premier] to have anything to do with my name likeness, events, tributes etc. connected in anyway to my situation including any use of my name or circumstance for any reason and I have instructed my lawyers to enforce this. I had nothing to do with him in life for over 7 years and want nothing to do with him in death. Solar has my life story and is well informed on my family situation, as well as the real reason for separating from my ex-DJ."

Solar said Guru was aware of the strife, which included at one point Guru's nephew, Justin Nicholas-Elam Ruff, posting on YouTube to complain about the family's lack of access to the rapper.

"I had no control over who could see Guru, but there were times he was in [the Critical Care Unit] and he was unable to see people," Solar said. "Any man at that point in their life has a right to decide who he wants around him and who he doesn't."

Solar said that as per the rapper's wishes, Guru will be cremated. There are plans to hold a tribute concert, which he said will bring everyone together, including fans, family and all those who worked with Guru.

The producer said a nonprofit organization, Each One Counts, was set up by Guru. Focused on disadvantaged youth, the nonprofit has been expanded to aid in cancer research.

The rapper would want his legacy to be the music, Solar said.

"We were making music that was experimental and cutting edge at a time when there was a lack of such music out there," Solar said. "He lived life, and he loved all music."

Source : CNN

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