CANCER IN NEW ZEALAND

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 103, 1 May 1926, Page 6

CANCER IN NEW ZEALAND

STATISTICAL STUDY.

"The Lancet," the weli : kn<rtrii British medical journal, of 20th March, publishes the following comments on the article on cancer, by Mr. J. W. Butcher, of the Government Statistician's Office, in the ''Official Year Book": — '' ' . ■''■:" ■ \' y "Another report, which iB geographically circumscribed,' derives, its chief interest from'this very limitation. New Zealand offers certain exceptional features for the statistical study of eaneer. It is a-self-contained "country which has advanced during the past 50 years from a community of pioneers to a community enjoying all the advantages of civilisation without its disadvantages. We mean that the "people are prosperous, possess all facilities of education and communication, and have an efficient and up-to-date medical service, while the excessive urbanisation which characterises the civilisation of western Europe is absent. .The people a/c of Anglo-Saxon. descent without much admixture by immigration, so that by a comparison with the incidence of cancer in this country it is possible to test whether the difference in the climatic and social conditions-has affected the incidence of cancer. . The report shows that the incidence of cancer in New Zealand is exactly the same as in this country. "During the. last 50 years'there has been a very rapid increase in the recorded death-rate from cancor in. New Zealand. The increase is. mainly an apparent one, as Mr. Butcher pftints out • in. an admirable summary at the end of the report, due to the greater efficiency of the medical service, which in' New Zealand, as in all civilised countries, is gradually bringing, by better diagnosis and registration, the recorded'deathrate from cancer more and more up to the level of the unknown actual death-' rate from cancer. Wo find accordingly the most rapid increase during the earlier years IS7O to 1900, while during the last 15 years the death-rate has remained nearly on the same level.' The increase affects men more than women, because in men the organs chiefly liable to cancer are less accessible than in women, so. that they escape diagnosis more easily."