AUSTRALIA may finally be reaping the benefits of its “slip, slap, slop” campaigns, launched in the 1980s to encourage people to protect their skin from the sun. In younger people, the number of new non-melanoma skin cancers is stable or in decline.
The 2002 National Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer Survey, whose results were announced last week, found that the rates of the most common forms of skin cancer, non-melanomas, have doubled in Australia over the past two decades. But the increase is restricted to the over-50s.
The increase among the over-50s is not a surprise, says Craig Sinclair, chair of Australia’s…
