He Jie(L), head of the National Cancer Center, and Zhou Tao, a CCTV presenter, are pictured at the launch ceremony of cancer prevention and treatment awareness week, April 15, 2016. [Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]

The annual cancer prevention and treatment awareness week was inaugurated Friday in Beijing by top cancer specialists of the nation.

The week runs from April 15 to 21 each year and aims to raise public cancer awareness and rally social support for the patients and the fight against the disease.

"Cancer has become a rising public health problem facing Chinese and it's increasing quickly due to multiple reasons, including fast ageing, unhealthy lifestyle, and environmental pollution," said He Jie, head of the National Cancer Center, at the launch ceremony.

More than two million Chinese die from cancer every year and about three million new cases are reported annually, statistics from the National Health and Family Planning Commission showed.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 40 percent of the cancers can be prevented with healthy lifestyle.

ZhiXiuyi, a senior lung cancer expert in Beijing, said smoking is the top reason for the lung cancer cases in the country where half of the men smoke.

For long, lung cancer has been the top cancer type in the country, and the top cancer killer as well, he added.

Nationwide, the commission has introduced a three-year plan expanding early cancer screening, registration and prevention while reducing smoking.

The plan seeks to better protect people's health by improving cancer prevention, standardizing the country's cancer registration system and expanding cancer screening and early detection to increase five-year survival rates.

Specific goals of the three-year prevention plan include increasing cancer patient registration to 30 percent of the country's population, increasing the percentage of the population that has essential knowledge of cancer prevention to 60 percent, and reducing the smoking rate among adults by three percent.