China is excited about proton therapy and for good reason.
Officially, 3.5 million Chinese per year are diagnosed with cancer. And 2.2 million people die of cancer, according to the World Health Organization. In the U.S., 70 percent of those with cancer survive five years after treatment. In China, just 30 percent survive to their five-year anniversary. Treatment is hard to come by—there is less than one conventional radiation therapy machine per million people in China compared to more than 12 machines per million in the U.S., for example. And in China diagnosis often happens too late. (more…)