CANCER DEATHS

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 December 1944, Page 2

CANCER DEATHS

INCREASE IN NEW ZEALAND

Each year cancer is responsible for more deaths in New Zealand than can be assigned to any cause other than diseases of the heart. In 1942, the latest year recorded,, there were 2029 deaths from cancer in the Dominion, a proportion of 13.13 per 10,000 of population. The rate in 1932 was 10.13. The latest edition of the New Zealand Official Year Book says that one factor contributing towards the recorded increase in deaths from cancer is the increasing proportion of persons reaching the ages where cancer largely claims its victims. This position has been brought about principally by the gradual amelioration of the one-time scourges of certain epidemic diseases, which exacted a heavy toll of human life at the earlier ages. Tuberculosis may, perhaps, be classified in the group mentioned, as the progresesive decline in the death rate from that disease for very many yearsis practically uniform with the rise in the cancer death rate. The standardised cancer death rate in 1942 shows a decrease of .19 and the recorded death rate a decrease of .05 a 1000, as compared with the previous year. Ninety-three per cent, of deaths from cancer during 1942 were at ages of 45 years and upwards, and 53 per cent, at ages of 65 years and upwards.

There has been very little movement in. the standardised cancer death rate for persons under 65 years o’f age. For persons over 65, however, the standardised death rate increased fairly rapidly in the earlier years of the Dominion’s history, and reached its maximum in the period from 1926 to 1930, at about the time when the age constitution of the population of New'Zealand for the first time approximated that of the older countries of Europe. The figures suggest that cancer, while undoubtedly increasing in numerical incidence, is not doing so out of proportion to the population exposed to the cancer risk. Improvement in diagnosis has also been res- I ponsible for some of the numerical in- 1 crease in the recorded deaths from cancer,- but this factor has probably become more stabilised in recent years.