Hong Kong women are set to overtake men in new cancer cases, government data shows

Women are on course to overtake men for the first time in new cancer cases in Hong Kong, as the number of people diagnosed with the top killer disease in the city reached a record high in 2018.

The latest statistics, released by the Hong Kong Cancer Registry on Wednesday, showed that the year-on-year rise in cancer cases was 2.9 per cent, down from the 10-year-high of 5.1 per cent recorded in the previous year. But newly confirmed cases still went up to 34,028 in 2018, meaning 93 city residents were diagnosed with the disease each day during the year on average.

Dr Wong Kam-hung, director of the registry under the Hospital Authority, said that the gap between new male and female cases, at 17,040 and 16,988 in 2018, had steadily narrowed in a decade from 1,643 in 2008 to just 52.

“If the current trend persists, women will overtake men in one or two years, either in 2019 or 2020,” he said. The figures for 2019 will be announced next year.

Much of the remarkable turnaround was due to demographic changes and the prevalence of various types of cancer, the veteran oncologist said. The 10-year average of new male patients had stabilised, but the overall trajectory for women was still trending up.

According to official data from the Census and Statistics Department, the female population rose from 3.5 million in 2006 to 4 million in 2018, while the male population increased from 3.2 million to just 3.4 million over the same period.

New breast and corpus uteri cancer cases, which affect women predominantly, jumped 5.6 and 8.3 per cent respectively in 2018, while the rate of colorectal cancer, most common among men, remained unchanged from the year before, the data showed. Prostate cancer also recorded a 1.6 per cent decline during the same period.

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There was not much good news for women in death rates either, as Wong confirmed that despite a general decrease in mortality, the figure for women had fallen slower than men over a 10-year survey period.

“Eating habits, the amount of exercise, health awareness, diagnostic methods, and other societal factors, all contribute to the difference. But more research will have to be made on this area to better understand the phenomenon,” Wong said.

Colorectal, lung, breast, prostate, and liver cancers held the same top five spots for most commonly diagnosed cancers in 2018, as in the year before, accounting for 57.3 per cent of new cases collectively.

The sharpest rise among all types of the disease for both genders was in thyroid cancer, which jumped 17.3 per cent annually and ranked ninth among the most common cancers in the city, a development Wong attributed largely to better diagnosis and health awareness.

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But Wong struck an upbeat note as he also released the registry’s first citywide report on survival rates of cancer patients in various stages of the disease and concluded that the relative survival rate for breast cancer patients after five years of treatment, compared to their peers in the same age and sex, reached some 85 per cent.

The same figure for colorectal cancer patients hit close to 60 per cent as well, while patients in the first stage of breast cancer had almost the same chances of survival as the general population, Wong observed.

“This should bring hope to ordinary citizens, and remind them of the importance of early detection,” he said.