Review Article Pakistan- Country Profile of Cancer and Cancer Control

• Main Authors: Yasmin Bhurgri, Asif Bhurgri, Sania Nishter, Ashfaq Ahmed, Ahmed Usman, Shahid Pervez, Rashida Ahmed, Naila Kayani, Ahmed Riaz, Hadi Bhurgri, Imtiaz Bashir, Sheema H. Hassan
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Since 2001; it has had a bolstered economy and renewed; Arctic; Pyramid
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.516.7171; http://jpma.org.pk/PdfDownload/629.pdf

on the west and China in the north. The total area of Pakistan is 803,940 sq km, 778,720 sq km of land and 25,220 sq km of water. Largely an agricultural country the arable land constitutes 27.87 % of the total land area. The climate is mostly hot, dry desert, becomes temperate in northwest and arctic in the north. The terrain is flat Indus plain in the east; mountains in north and northwest; and the Baluchistan plateau in the west. The administrative divisions of the country are 4 provinces (Sindh, Punjab, Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province), a territory (Federally Administered Tribal Area), 1 capital territory (Islamabad), and the Pakistani administered portion of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region (Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas).1 The estimated population of Pakistan is 162,419,946, with an annual population growth rate of 2.03 % (July 2005). The population is young, the median age being 19.44 years in males and 19.74 years in females. The age structure is a typical developing country pyramid with the 0-14 years constituting 39.6 % of the population (male 3,104,311/female 31,244,297); the 15-64 years group form-ing the bulk i.e. 56.3 % (male 46,759,333/female 44,685,828) and the 65+ years comprising 4.1 % (male 3,189,122 / female 3,437,055) of the population. The major ethnic groups in the country are Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtun (pathan), Baloch, Muhajir (immigrants from India at the time of partition and their descendants). Muslims comprise 97 % of the population with the Christians, Hindus, and other religions comprising 3 % of the population.l Pakistan is a developing country, which falls into the