New Zealand now has the world's highest rate of the deadliest form of skin cancer and it's getting worse, a study has found.
Melanoma experts are calling for government action after Brisbane researchers found New Zealand had passed Australia for the highest per capita rate of the invasive form of the cancer.
Since 2005 Australia's melanoma rate has been falling while New Zealand's has been on the rise, and is expected to keep growing until at least 2017, according to the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute study.
New Zealand melanoma experts said the problem had been caused by a lack of commitment from government to tackle the problem for more than a decade.
University of Otago Associate Professor Tony Reeder says an example of political failure had been a lack of action on banning sun beds.
"In stark contrast, Australia acted decisively to protect its population by implementing a comprehensive ban," he said.
One of the study's authors, Professor David Whiteman, said while New Zealanders had become more sun smart more could be done to prevent skin cancer.
There was a strong case for more government investment into funding melanoma prevention over coming years to limit increasing treatment costs, he said in the report published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.
But he said the news was not all bad, and the findings predicted New Zealand would soon see a decline in rates.
"We think the main reason why rates in Australia, and we hope New Zealand, will decline before the other populations is that both countries have put a huge effort into primary prevention campaigns," Prof Whiteman said.
But although the rates would begin falling soon, the number of total cases would keep going up because of an ageing population, Prof Whiteman said.
"Unfortunately for older New Zealanders alive today, most will have already sustained significant amounts of sun damage before the prevention campaigns were introduced," he said.
The study compared the frequency of the skin cancer over the three decades in six countries, also including Britain, Sweden, Norway and the United States.
The researchers found New Zealand's rate of invasive melanoma nearly doubled from 1982 to 2011, while Australia's peaked in 2005.
