Aotearoa's rates of death from breast cancer are reducing by 2.1 percent each year. Photo: BSIP via AFP
A new global study shows New Zealand is doing well in bringing down the number of breast cancer deaths, a health researcher says.
The study - led by the International Agency for Research on Cancer - has found New Zealand and Australia have some of the highest rates of breast cancer diagnoses in the world, at about one in every 1000 women.
But it also found Aotearoa's rates of death from breast cancer were at the lower end of the scale, and reducing by 2.1 percent each year.
Victoria University associate professor in epidemiology Mona Jeffreys said this was positive news.
"I was really surprised when I looked at the results over time and looked to see what's happened in the last 10 years. So in terms of new cases, there has been a small number of excess new cases, particularly in women aged over 50, but there's actually been quite a big fall in deaths. New Zealand's doing really well in terms of bringing down breast cancer deaths," she said.
This was likely because New Zealand was diagnosing more cancers early, and had better treatment options, she said.
"A bit of it has to do with the fact we started at quite a high level, things weren't great 10 years ago. But there have been moves to try to increase screening. And of course, the more screening you do, the earlier you detect the breast cancer, and women are much more likely to survive if they're found to have breast cancer really early rather than later," Jeffreys said.
"We still have a long way to go with screening, and there are huge inequities, but we're heading in the right direction. I think that the coverage, so that's the number of people who are eligible who are actually turning up for screening, on average is about 70 percent, and that's not wonderful, but it's okay."
Jeffreys said her biggest concern was the inequities for Māori women.
"So for Māori women, the screening program is not working as well. It's not set up to work for Māori women in terms of access, and likewise for Pacific women in the past that's been the case, but recent data shows that Pacific women are accessing screening at a much higher rate than previously.
"So it's really Māori women that we're mostly concerned about. And that has a huge flow-on impact in terms of how bad the breast cancer is if it's diagnosed later in terms of not being picked up at screening," she said.
"I think that for every single health condition that we consider in New Zealand, we need to be thinking about inequities because they are pervasive. Having said that this is an international study, 185 countries, and they didn't have the ability to drill down and look at that, but I think the onus is on us as researchers in New Zealand to make sure that we're keeping inequity at the absolute forefront of everything that we do."
The study analysed 185 countries and looked at new breast cancer diagnoses and death rates in 2022, as well as trends over 10 years.
Globally, 2.3 million new cases and 670,000 deaths from female breast cancer occurred in 2022.
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