Cancer will kill 13.2 million people worldwide in 2030 compared to 7.6 million in 2008, the United Nations' cancer research agency predicted.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer or IARC also said on Tuesday 21.4 million people will be diagnosed in the year of 2030 compared to 12.7 million new cases diagnosed in 2008.

The findings came from a database on global cancer incidence and mortality that was launched in 2008 to show that the burden of cancer is now shifting from the wealthy to poor countries.

In 2008, about 56 percent of new cases of cancer were reported in developing countries which accounted for 63 percent of all cancer deaths, according to the cancer agency.

In 2008, the population in the developing countries was about 5.5 billion compared to 1.2 billion people in developed countries, according to Population Reference Bureau.

considering the sizes of the populations, the incidence and mortality of cancer seemed much higher in the developed countries than developing countries even though the rate of death from cancer was higher in developing countries.

The most commonly diagnosed cancers worldwide in 2008 included lung cancer (1.61 million cases), breast cancer (1.38 million cases) and colorectal cancers (1.23 million cases), the cancer agency said.

The cancers that killed the largest number of people in 2008 included lung cancer (1.38 million cases), stomach cancer (0.74 million cases) and liver cancer (0.69 million cases).

Environmental factors including lifestyle and diet are the major determinants for the risk  of cancer and genetics is responsible only for about 5 percent of the risk, according to Dr. Colin T. Campbell, a distinguished nutrition scientist at Cornell University.

Dr. Campbell says in his book China Study that eating a plant food-cased diet can reduce the risk of cancer drastically.  He says in some countries of China where meat and dairy products are rare, certain types of cancers are non-existent.

David Liu