The steady increase in wealth of East Asian nations during the past few decades has seen the population transition towards diets comprising more fats and less fibre. And there is general consensus among the scientific and medical community that such a diet leads to higher incidence of colorectal cancer. Public health bodies including the World Health Organization (WHO) and National Cancer Centre of Singapore (NCCS) therefore predict that current increasing trends in colorectal cancer will only continue.

Hong Kong, being a region that started developing earlier, observed a 190% increase in the crude rate of colorectal cancer incidence between 1983 and 2006. (See this document.) It is on track to overtake lung cancer soon as Hong Kong’s deadliest form of cancer.

Thus we decided that at least one of our human practice activities would have to involve interacting with the local cancer therapy community in a certain way.