The 12th International Seminar and 6th General Meeting of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Primary Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Gastric Cancer (WHO-CC-GC) was held in Seoul, Korea, September 9-12, 1996, in conjunction with the 15th World Congress of Collegium Internationale Chirurgiae Digestivae (CICD). It was the largest meeting in the history of the WHO-CC-GC.
The WHO established the WHO-CC-GC in 1970, and it is one of the oldest WHO collaborating centers. Its headquarters is in the National Cancer Center Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. The national WHO collaborating centers are working cooperatively in 16 countries. The main purposes of the WHO-CC-GC are to promote basic and clinical studies about gastric cancer and to disseminate the new knowledge and technologies to the world.
Gastric cancer is still one of the important health problems because it is the most common cancer in Far East Asian countries and the leading cause of