Scots Suffer Highest Cancer Rate

Scotland has the highest cancer rates in the UK, with Scots 15% more likely to die from the illness. National Statistics figures covering the years 2002 to 2004 revealed that there were 446 new cases per 100,000 men and 379 cases per 100,000 women in Scotland.

That compares with rates of 450 (men) and 366 (women) in Wales, and 394 and 338 in England. Scotland also had the highest overall death rate for cancer in the UK: 262 per 100,000 men and 182 per 100,000 women, compared with 226 and 159 in the whole of the UK.

The three most common cancers among men were prostate (93 per 100,000), lung and colorectal. Breast (118 per 100,000), lung and colorectal cancers were most prevalent among women.

There were an average of 154,000 deaths from cancer each year in the UK in 2002/04, split 80,000:74,000 between men and women. For both sexes, lung cancer had the highest death rates (56 men and 30 women per 100,000), In Scotland, the incidence of lung cancer was more than 35% higher than that for the UK as a whole and 50% higher in females.