International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics

Gynaecological cancers are set to kill more women in developing countries over the coming years, according to experts.

A coalition of cancer specialists have told the European Cancer Organisation and the European Society for Medical Oncology congress in Berlin that breast and cervical cancers threaten the lives of women in the third world, reports AFP.

It is estimated that incidences of all forms of cancer will double in the next 20 years and the expert claims cancer is "now increasingly a health burden for less-developed regions of the world".

"More than half of the 12.4 million estimated new cases of cancer in 2008, and two-thirds of the estimated 7.6 million cancer deaths, occurred in low- and middle-income countries, where cancer kills more people each year than AIDS, TB and malaria," said the experts.

Researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg and Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Sweden, recently claimed to have developed a new treatment for ovarian cancer.

The treatment, which uses a radioactive substance that seeks and destroys tumour cells in the future, has no unwanted side-effects, according to the team.