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The trend is up, up and up for female lung cancer deaths

1. Increased 200 Per Cent over 35 Years in Industrialized World—

So why do we have to go in the same path ??

2. Female mortality from lung cancer in industrialized continues to increase even as male mortality is beginning to decrease, trends over 35 years for some 22 industrialized countries show.

"The death rate from lung cancer among women in developed countries in the early 1980s was more than 200 per cent higher than the level prevailing in the early l950s," a recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

The death rates are rising rapidly because more and more women smoke, with mortality highest in such countries as Australia, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States, where women began smoking sooner.

"1n contrast to men, there is very little evidence of a deceleration in the rate of increase, says the report’s author, Dr Man Lopez, statistician with 14110’s Health Situation and Trend Assessment Programme.

Overall death rates for males from lung cancer in developed countries have stabilized since the mid-l980s, after reaching a peak ‘which was, on average, 165 per cent greater than the mortality level prevailing at the beginning of the l950s." Moreover, in England and Wales, the mortality declined by roughly 10 per cent over the past decade.

Not only will lung cancer continue to be ‘one of the pre-eminent public health issues for women in the developed countries" for years to come, the report says, but also the No. 1 form of female cancer in some countries even ahead of breast cancer. Among examples of the trend:

- - In the United States, lung cancer ‘has now caught up with breast cancer.’ The country’s lung cancer death rate, the world’s top, is 31.4 deaths, age-adjusted, per 100,000 population; its breast cancer rate is virtually the same, 31.8.

-- In Japan, although mortality from lung cancer is relatively low at 12.1 deaths, age-adjusted, per 100,000 population, it is already higher than mortality from breast cancer, which is 8 per 100,000.

-- In the United Kingdom, lung cancer is projected to overtake breast cancer mortality by the Year 2010. The lung cancer rates, age-adjusted, is 30 deaths per 100,000; the breast cancer rate is 41.5.

In Scotland, however, already more women are dying from lung cancer than from breast cancer. The death rate for lung cancer is 40.2 per 100,000, while for breast cancer it is 38.3, age-adjusted.

Tobacco-induced diseases take an estimated 1.5 million lives yearly alone in the industrialized world, "more than one-third of which are women," the report says. Of total deaths for males and females, about 475,000 occur "prematurely," that is before age 65, thus "dispelling the notion that smoking is primarily a cause of death among the elderly."

According to the report, "the most significant feature of post-war mortality in the developed countries has been the extraordinary and sustained rise in lung cancer mortality, the vast majority of which can be attributed to cigarette smoking."