HPA apologizes for mistakenly recorded cancer statistics

Taipei, April 14 (CNA) The Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said Tuesday that its cancer statistics have been wrongly recorded since 2010, with the number of people with cancer having since then been mistakenly recorded as the incidence rates of cancer.

According to the rankings of cancer incidence rates for 2012, the 10 most common cancers in Taiwan are breast cancer, followed by colon, liver, lung, prostate, oral, uterine, gastric, thyroid and skin cancer, in that order, according to the new, corrected statistics.

Compared with statistics for 2010 and 2011, the ranking for uterine cancer moved up one place to the seventh-most common cancer in 2012, while cervical cancer dropped from 9th to 11th, and thyroid cancer made the top 10 list for the first time.

According to the rankings based on the number of cancer patients for 2012, the 10 most common cancers are colon, lung and liver cancer, followed by breast cancer, oral, prostate, gastric, skin, thyroid and esophageal cancer.

Since the number of cancer patients and the incidence rates are different, they should be given different analyses and interpretations, the HPA said Tuesday in its apology for the mistake.

The list of the 10 most common cancers in Taiwan has been produced based on the incidence rates in the past few years, but started in 2010 to be based on the number of cancer patients when Chiu Shu-ti (邱淑媞) assumed the directorship of the HPA. As a result, the statistics have been misinterpreted since then, an HPA official said.

(By Lung Pei-ning and Evelyn Kao)ENDITEM/J