Alibaba to join fight against cancer

Ali Health, Alibaba's healthcare arm, and Health Times, a Chinese health and medical publication, earlier this week released their patient guidelines on colorectal cancer.

In an easily understandable, question-and-answer format, the document has been written by 22 top colorectal cancer doctors in China, and covers prevention, early detection, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of colorectal cancer.

Zhang Suzhan, director of Zhejiang University's cancer research institute, said about 80 percent of Chinese patients with colorectal cancer are diagnosed during the middle or late stage of the condition, and that the cancer is recording a rising incidence rate in China.

The reason, he said, is that the disease's early symptoms are easily overlooked, and most Chinese people are not used to having early colorectal cancer screening, such as colonoscopies.

When diagnosed late, nearly half of all patients will not survive five years, but if detected early, 80 percent can be cured or survive above five years, he said.

Colorectal cancer, also known as bowel cancer and colon cancer, is one of the top five cancer killers in China. Statistics from the Chinese National Central Cancer Registry showed a total of 376,300 patients were diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2015, and the disease accounted for 191,000 deaths that year – meaning about one Chinese person died of the disease every three minutes in 2015.