by Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

NNSL (Apr 13/98) - Though the number of cancer cases is rising, the proportion of affected Northerners is staying about the same.

"Our cancer rates are still lower than Canada as a whole," said NWT's chief medical officer, Andre Corriveau.

"Our cancer rate right now for males is significantly lower than the Canadian rate while for the females, it is closer to the Canadian average."

Lung cancer is the main form of cancer for all Canadians, claiming 6,500 women and 10,600 men a year, according to Statistics Canada figures released last week.

In the North, though Corriveau could not produce figures, he said lung cancer is even more pronounced.

"It's quite a bit higher, actually," he said. "If we didn't have lung cancer our rates would be extremely low."

In the rest of Canada, after lung cancer, the second-most prevalent kind of cancer for men is prostate cancer. For women, it is breast cancer.

In the North, both those varieties of cancer relatively uncommon, which Corriveau attributes to diets rich in fish and marine mammals.

"The level of anti-oxidants found in blubber, for example, is very high," he said.

Other sources of anti-oxidants, which reduce the chance of contracting bowel cancer, include cauliflower and brussels sprouts.

The third major group is colorectal cancers, which are essentially cancers of the large intestine.

In total, the incidence of cancer nation-wide has increased 30 per cent, bringing Statistics Canada's prediction for new cases to 129,000 in 1998. About half of those are expected to die.

"The rates haven't really changed because the population increases and also the population is aging," Corriveau said. "So you get an increased number of cases, but that doesn't mean that there are higher rates of cancer."

The leading cause of pre-mature death, in terms of hours lost from an expected lifespan of 70 years, is injuries, followed next by cancer.