UK records the world's biggest fall in cancer death

Death rates from breast and lung cancer have fallen by more in Britain than anywhere else in the world due to improved public health campaigns, a leading charity said yesterday.

Cancer Research UK said a study of statistics by two of Britain's most eminent scientists showed that deaths from lung cancer, the biggest killer, had more than halved since the Sixties. Deaths from breast cancer, the most common cancer among non-smoking women, have also fallen by nearly a third since 1992, when Britain had the world's worst survival rate, and this was the biggest fall anywhere.

The figures were revealed by Sir Richard Peto and Sir Richard Doll, who first proved the link between smoking and lung cancer.

Professor Peto said that when it came to persuading people to give up smoking, "we are the best in the world".

He added: "But this is not just about anti-smoking adverts. The media and people in general have taken on board the messages about diagnosis, screening and treatment for all types of cancer."

The statistics, which will be presented to a conference in Oslo, show that the death rate for lung cancer among men in 1965 was 245 per 100,000, falling to 108 per 100,000 in 1999.

Women, who took longer to pick up the smoking habit, have also benefited from health awareness with 45 deaths per 100,000 in 1999 compared with 56 per 100,000 in 1985.

Improvements in diagnosis and treatment have also been helped reduce breast cancer deaths by 28 per cent among the under-70s since 1989, according to the figures. About 50 women in every 100,000 are now dying from the disease, compared with 70 in every 100,000 in 1989.

The improvement outstrips that of all other countries, including the United States.

A similar decrease has been recorded in cervical cancer due to the NHS screening programme, the study found.

Overall, premature deaths from cancer in Britain – people who die before the age of 70 – fell by 20 per cent in the past decade, a figure that would be improved further by persuading more people to give up smoking, Professor Peto said.

But critics pointed out that Britain was still lagging behind other Western countries on survival rates.