Last week a report from Statistics Jersey on mortality rates in 2018 showed that cancer was still the leading cause of deaths in Jersey.
It exceeded the number of deaths caused by circulatory diseases for the first time in 2010.
Last year, cancer accounted for 30% of the 810 deaths recorded.
Medical officer of health Dr Susan Turnbull said there were many forms of cancer, with lung cancer still the largest single category of cancer death.
It is a trend Dr Turnbull said is a legacy from times when smoking rates were much higher than they are now.
‘Cancer of the lung, where more than nine out of ten cases are caused by smoking, takes up to 20 to 30 years to develop,’ she said. ‘It will be some time before we start to see substantial falls in lung-cancer deaths now that smoking has become such a minority activity over recent decades. Only about one in eight of the population (12%) are still regular/daily smokers.’
Meanwhile, smoking, along with drinking alcohol, was also linked to the higher death rate among men under the age of 65 when compared to women in the same age group.
‘Looking at male/female patterns of death, in age groups lower than 80, there are more male deaths than female deaths,’ said Dr Turnbull.
‘In the under-65s, this difference is particularly marked. This is not a new finding. We know from previous reports, including a detailed report on men’s health in Jersey published some years ago, that much of the excess of male deaths in the younger age groups is due to potentially preventable medical conditions.
‘These are often either smoking-related, such as certain cancers or heart disease, or the types of conditions such as liver disease that are linked to excess alcohol consumption.’
