The 26th Congress of International Clinical Hyperthermia Society closed in Shenzhen on Sunday.

Nearly 300 participants from more than 10 countries attended the three-day meeting, reported Shenzhen Daily.

The congress focused on the use of hyperthermia, artificially induced exceptionally high fever for the treatment of cancers, according to Roy C. Page, president of International Clinical Hyperthermia Society, which co-sponsored the event along with Chinese Clinical Hyperthermic Oncology Group.

According to the WTO, the global incidence of cancer will rise by 50 percent by 2020.

From the 1970s to 2000, cancer patients increased from 900,000 to 2 million in China, one fifth of the cancer patients worldwide.

Meanwhile, 1.5 million Chinese died of cancer in 2000, a quarter of the world's cancer deaths.

“In China, one out of every five deaths is from cancer,” said Zhang Defu, an oncologist from Beijing.

Zhang said it was difficult for cancerous cells to survive heat and artificially induced high fever in a patient's body could help kill the cells.

(Shenzhen Daily September 13, 2004)