Cutting tobacco use remains a major challenge

These figures highlight that cancer is not just a problem for the developed world, but also in the developing world. We need to have an eye, not just on infectious diseases in these countries but also chronic diseases like cancer as well.

In the UK, although incidence rates are going up quite steeply, we are making huge progress in terms of improved survival from cancer. Increasingly in the UK it will become more important to think of cancer as a disease that can be managed and treated, rather than paying too much heed to rising incidence rates.

These can hide the true situation that people with cancer have much better outcome than they did in decades past. This is positive for countries such as the UK, but there is still so much more that we could do and the latest figures are a wake-up call in terms of the high number of preventable cancers.

If anything, the new figures probably underestimate the extent of the preventability of cancer because they focus on diet, obesity, physical activity and alcohol. But we know that tobacco is the number one cause of cancer.