Keynote comment: Importance of recognising scientific evidence

摘要

Last month the Mouth Cancer Awareness campaign (Nov 12-18, 2006) in the UK aimed to increase public awareness about a disease that causes 145 500 annual deaths worldwide.1 However, the majority of these deaths are in developing countries, and the public should be aware that much of this burden is preventable through a simple technology that has been scientifically proven to reduce mortality from oral cancer in people exposed to its causative factors. In 2005, we published results from a randomised controlled trial (RCT) in Kerala, India, which showed that population-based oral visual inspection of high-risk individuals could be an effective prevention strategy.