KEY POINTS:
The Breast Cancer Network today presented its 10,700-strong petition to Parliament calling for a breast cancer strategy focused on prevention.
Spokeswoman Gillian Woods said more than 2300 women a year contracted the disease in New Zealand.
Maori women fared particularly badly than others as more Maori women got breast cancer and a larger proportion of them died, she said.
New Zealand's incidence rate of breast cancer rose 34 per cent from 1980 to 2002 and cancer projections from the Ministry of Health indicated it would continue to rise.
Breast cancer remained a killer disease for more than 600 women every year despite early diagnosis, new surgical techniques, anti-oestrogenic drugs, new chemotherapeutic agents and a falling mortality rate.
The petition asked the Government for a breast cancer strategy focused on reversing the rising incidence of breast cancer in New Zealand.
It also asked the Government to acknowledge synthetic chemicals in the environment had a role in the development of breast cancer and asked that New Zealand women be tested to establish the level of residues carried in their bodies.
It also asked that a precautionary approach be adopted with all chemicals where there was evidence of a link with breast cancer.
Green MP Sue Kedgley, who received the petition today, promised the health select committee she chaired would look at the issue seriously.
"We spend more than $40 million a year treating breast cancer but almost nothing on strategies to prevent women from developing breast cancer in the first place."
MPs from National, Labour, United Future and New Zealand First said they agreed prevention was better than cure and promised the petition would be properly considered.
Ms Kedgley said it was time to end the "official silence" about the link between synthetic oestrogenic chemicals and breast cancer and reduce women's exposure to them.
"There are literally hundreds of synthetic chemicals linked to breast cancer in everyday use in New Zealand yet the Government is doing nothing to identify or reduce women's exposure to them."
- NZPA
