Irish women at higher risk from breast cancer

Irish women are more likely to die from breast cancer than other women in Europe, apart from Denmark. According to a new European Commission (EC) report 31.1 women in every 100,000 in Ireland die from breast cancer. This rate is twice as high as Spain’s.

Since 2008 breast cancer services in Ireland have been organized in eight hospitals and the figures may now reflect this.

The report, which looks at the figures for 2008, recorded an average of 23.8 deaths per 100,000 women. After Spain, Norway, Finland and Portugal have to lowest rates of death from breast cancer. In Portugal just 20 per 100,000 females die from breast cancer.

Ireland is ranked in eighth position for the number of deaths from all cancers. It is 15th highest when it comes to prostate cancer and ninth for lung cancer.

The report also shows that life expectancy for Irish woman is 82 years. The European average is just 80.8. Irish men can expect to live to 77.4 years, while the European average is just 74.3 years.

Nessa Childers, a Labour MEP, who helped with the report said that 100 percent coverage in terms of screening for all cancers should be achieved in the next five years.

She said “Cancer represents the second most important cause of death and morbidity in Europe. Currently one-in-three people in the EU will be diagnosed with cancer during their life-time and experts predict that the cancer burden will increase sharply due to the ageing population unless urgent action to improve cancer control is taken now."