key: cord-0891031-wwn8jff4
authors: Baussano, Iacopo; Sankaranarayanan, Rengaswamy; Weiderpass, Elisabete
title: Prevention is life- and cost-saving
date: 2020-05-27
journal: Prev Med
DOI: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2020.106150
sha: 32a862f8ab8f36a9acfc1f4a9692e70f93728dcf
doc_id: 891031
cord_uid: wwn8jff4

nan

J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 2 The importance of prevention to safeguard human health is indisputably illustrated by the consequences of its failure. The global unfolding of the coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic is certainly a most striking example. The disruptive effects of a pandemic have been repeatedly anticipated and illustrated since the emergence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003 (Osterholm, 2017) . Nevertheless, most national and supra-national institutions have failed to take the necessary measures and actions to prepare for a predictable contagion on a global scale.

Prevention can be life-and cost-saving in all domains of disease control -and while the consequences of failed prevention are spectacular in the case of rapidly-evolving epidemic infectious diseases, a lack of appropriate prevention is equally catastrophic for endemic, communicable and non-communicable diseases. For instance, globally, one in five men and one in six women will develop cancer in their lifetime; moreover, one man in eight and one woman in 11 will die of cancer. Furthermore, the global burden of cancer is expected to rise from 18.1 million new cancer cases and 9·6 million cancer deaths in 2018, to 29.4 million cases and 16.3 million deaths in 2040 (Bray et al., 2018) . If evenly adopted across the world, actions based on our current knowledge of risk factors could prevent 40% of all cancers worldwide (Weiderpass, 2019) . It is noteworthy that, currently, health inequalities are increasing worldwide, and that much of the global effort in preventing cancer has been suspended. There will be a heavy toll later in terms of cancers that could 

Global cancer statistics 2018: GLOBOCAN estimates of incidence and mortality worldwide for 36 cancers in 185 countries

Global burden of cancer attributable to infections in 2018: a worldwide incidence analysis

Global health security-an unfinished journey

Foreword

The authors declare no competing interests.