Mortality rate from cancers - The Herefordshire Partnership

Mortality rate from cancers

Mortality rates from cancers include all deaths from malignant neoplasms¹ . Over the reporting period, Herefordshire has experienced significantly² lower mortality rates from cancers than the West Midlands region and England as a whole.

Herefordshire has seen a steep decline in mortality rates from cancer between 1995-97 and 1999-2001, when rates seemed to stabilise at around 106 deaths per 100,000 population for a number of years. Since 2001-03, mortality rates from cancers have continued to decrease.

Since 2000-2003, Herefordshire's rate of decrease seems to be at a slightly slower rate than the West Midlands region or England. However Herefordshire's mortality rates from cancer are much lower, so a similar rate of decrease may not be expected or realistic. Mortality rates from cancers have been decreasing by approximately 2% each year since 2001-03 regionally and nationally whereas for Herefordshire there has only been a decrease of approximately 1% over the same period.

Since 1995-97, Herefordshire has seen a 19% decrease in the mortality rate from cancers, compared to a 17% decrease in the West Midlands region and England.

Comparator areas are those areas (PCTs in 2002-04 and local authorities in 2004-06) which have similar characteristics in terms of demographic, household composition, housing, socio-economic, employment and industry sector ³. An average for these areas is given to allow comparisons of similar areas to Herefordshire.

When making comparisons with the comparator areas, Herefordshire's mortality rates appear to be at similar levels in both 2003-05 and 04-06.

Chart 1. Mortality rate from cancer for people aged under 75 (per 100,000 population aged under 75)

Source: ONS, Crown Copyright

¹ All cancers specified by the codes ICD10 C00-C97.

² Significantly - means statistically significant as shown by the confidence intervals. For more information about this please see the Reference Section 53.

³ In 2003-05 the PCTs that were the most similar to Herefordshire in this were are Shropshire County, Mid-Devon and Mendip. In 2004-06, the authorities that were the most similar were Mid-Devon, North Shropshire, Mendip and Kings Lynn & West Norfolk.