Daily Hospital News: Cancer cases and deaths across the UK: which area are hit hardest?

Monday, June 13, 2011

Cancer cases and deaths across the UK: which area are hit hardest?

Cancer cases and deaths are down. Find out which ones are getting better and worse across the country
• Get the data

Are less of us dying of cancer now? That's what the latest statistics from Office for National Statistics appear to show.

The figures, out today, show that 153,800 men and 152,300 women were newly diagnosed with cancer each year in the UK during 2006–08 - which means rates of 421 per 100,000 men and 365 per 100,000 women.

Those figures are down from last year's, which covered 2005-2007. They showed 149,500 men and 148,500 women diagnosed with cancer each year - rates of 415 and 359 per 100,000 population respectively (the growing populsiton is responsible for making the rates smaller).

The highest cases - by rate - are in Wales, for men, and Scotland for women.

The data includes death rates too and 81,100 men and 74,400 women died from cancer in each of those years in the UK - mortality rates of 212 per 100,000 men and 153 per 100,000 women. That compares to rates of 214 and 154 per 100,000 population in the previous stats.

The biggest cancer by cases is breast cancer for women and prostate cancer for men. But the biggest killer is still lung cancer, says the ONS:

Lung cancer had the highest mortality rate for both males and females and the
mortality rate for males was 39 per cent higher than in females. For males the mortality rate for lung cancer (52 deaths per 100,000) was twice as high as that for prostate cancer (25 deaths per 100,000), and for females lung cancer had a higher mortality rate than breast cancer. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer was 62 per cent higher in males than females (22 and 14 deaths per
100,000 for males and females respectively)

The full data is below - and we hope to add historic numbers soon too. What can you do with it?