Cancer accounted for just under 30 per cent of all deaths in Australia in 2015 - but it sets upon and kills people at dramatically different rates from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.
This week, for the first time, rates of incidence and mortality of cancer for hundreds of small geographic areas across the country were released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
The information on cancer mortality, based on the period from 2009 to 2013, highlights the challenge of getting treatment to people living in poorer and more remote areas in order to limit preventable deaths.
Professor Sanchia Aranda, CEO of the Cancer Council, said it is widely known that cancer kills at a higher rate outside cities than inside. However she was optimistic that this new information would enable more detailed research further down the track.
"What this analysis is starting to do is give us the granularity that we need to ask more important questions," she said.
"It’s an important first step, but it speaks also to some of the paucity of the data that we have at that level, [which is required] to be able to answer that next set of questions.”
She also revealed that she has been working on unreleased research that identifies a "socioeconomic overlay” to established knowledge around differences in mortality rates between city and country areas.
"If you would look at rural people of high wealth, they have outcomes equivalent to people in metro centres,” she said.
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The information on the incidence of cancer, from 2006 to 2010, identifies some areas with extremely high age-standardised rates. In these areas residents are more at risk of being diagnosed with cancer, even when age is taken into account.
To the north of Brisbane, two regions - Maryborough and the Caboolture Hinterland - have more than twice the national rate.
Professor Aranda said incidence rates were typically higher in Queensland areas because of greater melanoma risk linked to increased sun exposure, but this only partly explained the rates in these regions.
Katie Clift, a spokesperson for Cancer Council Queensland, said her organisation did not yet have the answers to explain these local anomalies. She said more research is needed "to understand why rates are particularly high in these regions".
