DUSHANBE, February 10, 2009, Asia-Plus  -- According to specialists; estimates, the number of cancer diseases has increased in Tajikistan in recent year.

Speaking in an interview with Asia-Plus, deputy director of the Cancer Center at the Ministry of Health (MoH), Zafar Huseinov, said that some 12,000 cancer sufferers have been officially registered in the country to this date.  More than 2,000 new cases were registered last year alone.

“However, I assume that the number of cancer sufferers in the country is higher than official data shows, because rural residents do not undergo appropriate medical examination” the deputy director said.

Huseinov named deteriorating environmental situation, radiation, food products of low quality, and solar radiation as factors that contributed to increase in the number of cancer diseases in Tajikistan.

“The other not the least of the factors contributing to increase in the number of cancer diseases in the country is the stress mechanism,” said he “That hard situation our people had gone through in the 1990s has begun to act up today.”