London: Around one in five people in England will contract skin cancer during their lifetime because of increased exposure to the sun and more foreign holidays, a media report said citing experts.
According to the Daily Mail, cases have hit a record level and the specialists believe an ageing population and improvements to how cancers are reported are behind the rise.
Increasing exposure to the sun and more foreign holidays may also be to blame, the report said.
There were 224,092 skin cancers recorded in England in 2019, a rise of 26 per cent on the 177,677 recorded in 2013, according to figures analysed by the National Health Service (NHS) Digital and the British Association of Dermatologists.
Between 2013 and 2019 the total was more than 1.4 million, as per the report.
“We are fast approaching a quarter of a million cases a year in England. We estimate that one in five people will have a skin cancer in their lifetime,” Tanya Bleiker, the association’s president, was quoted as saying.
“While more needs to be done to prevent skin cancer, we also need to increase the resources available to tackle the rise,” Bleiker added.
A breakdown shows there were 15,332 melanomas in 2019, up from 12,885 in 2013. Melanoma is less common than other skin cancers but can be more deadly.