Anna was sick: cerebral neoplasia. She had a tumor.

parasitic disease, chronic and degenerative disease, severe nutritional deficiency, neoplasia, traffic accidents and violence in all its forms.

The main causes of death in hospital in that year were haemorrhagic dengue, pneumonia and bronchopneumonia, cranio-cerebral traumatism, septicaemia, malign cerebral neoplasias, Hodgkin's lymphoma, AIDS, etc.

Neoplasias were the second cause of death in 2002, followed by so-called external causes. The most common form of neoplasia in women is breast cancer, followed by tracheal, bronchial, lung, and cervical cancer; among men, the first causes were tracheal, bronchial, and lung cancer, followed by prostate and stomach cancer.

The most striking characteristic is the steady drop in death from infectious and parasitic diseases, in parallel to the increase in circulatory system diseases, which took the lead as the main cause of death during the 1960s, as well as outside causes and respiratory system diseases, in addition to neoplasias, shown in table 75.

Cervical cancer is the primary cause of death by cancer in women between 30 and 59 years of age; the second most common cause is neoplasia. However, owing to the tendency to initiate sexual relations at ever-earlier ages, cervical cancer is affecting increasingly younger women.

Also in 2002, the Committee was informed of the implementation of the Programme of Action for the Prevention and Control of Breast Cancer, which aims to reduce the rate of increase in mortality caused by this type of neoplasia among Mexican women.

As expected, the medium-term trend towards a rise in the death rate from this neoplasia (in 1990: 13.06 deaths per 100,000 women aged 25 years and older) has been confirmed, but in the short term this trend seems to have stabilized (in 2000: 14.44 deaths per 100,000 women aged 25 years and older).

Consequently, the vaccination campaign was run from 12-30 April 1999, covering citizens aged over 65 at the same time their diphtheria and tetanus vaccinations were brought up to date (accidental tetanus has been shifting to higher age groups over the past few years), as well as offering vaccination against pneumococcus for hospitalized patients, people living in shelters and geriatric homes, patients suffering from chronic pneumopathies, cardiopathies and nephropathies, neoplasias and metabolic disturbances, and immunodepressed patients.

A cooperation agreement among the National Centre for Gender Equity and Reproductive Health (CNEGSR), the ministries of health in southern Mexico (Chiapas, Guerrero, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Puebla, Yucatán and Veracruz), and the Japan International Cooperation Agency was signed on 4 October 2004, in an effort to support the impact goal — which is to reduce by half the differences in death rates from this neoplasia among the five states with the highest rates and the five states with the lowest rates.