Ahead of World Cancer Day, marked on Thursday, the Health Ministry released encouraging data showing that there has been a decrease in cancer mortality rates in Israel over the past 20 years, as well as a drop in the number of new cancer patients.,
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
According to the Israeli Cancer Association, the Jewish states ranks 45th on the list of the world's 50 countries with the most cancer patients. However, it did rank relatively low on the list of mortality rates, 89th place out of 90 countries with the highest number of fatal cancer cases.
"This indicates that the disease is being detected at an early stage and treated with effective and up-to-date methods," director of the Israel Center for Disease Control Prof. Lital Keinan-Boker said.
According to the National Cancer Registry data, 31,000 Israelis were diagnosed with cancer in 2018, of whom approximately 27,000 had invasive cancer.
Men were most commonly diagnosed with prostate and lung cancer. Women were most often diagnosed with breast cancer.
Some 11,000 Israelis died of invasive cancer in 2018. The most common cause of death for men was lung cancer, for women, breast cancer.
The risk of cancer mortality is higher for men than for women. Between 1996 and 2018, there's been a significant decrease in cancer mortality for both genders.
Besides lung and prostate cancer, men were diagnosed with colon, rectal and bladder cancers, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
As for blood cancer, the main cause of which is smoking, despite the early diagnoses, the survival and morbidity rates between 1996 and 2018 have not changed.
Some 401 patients died from bladder cancer in Israel in 2018, 77% of whom were men. The mortality rate among men is four times higher than women.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
