Overview
- New analysis shows around 247 cancer deaths per 100,000 people each year in the UK, an 11% drop in a decade and 29% below the 1989 peak.
- Declines over the past decade are steepest for stomach (−34%), lung (−22%) and ovarian (−19%) cancers, with notable falls in breast (−14%), bowel (−6%), cervical (−11%) and leukaemia (−9%).
- Prostate cancer mortality is down 11%, helped by improved treatments such as abiraterone developed by Cancer Research UK scientists.
- Rates have risen for a few cancers, including gallbladder (+29%), eye (+26%), liver (+14%) and kidney (+5%), while pancreatic, thyroid and melanoma deaths are broadly stable.
- Cervical cancer deaths are about 75% lower than in the 1970s thanks to NHS screening and the HPV vaccine, which has reached at least 6.5 million people, yet a larger, older population means total deaths continue to grow.