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Dramatic Findings in Sunscreen versus Melanoma Study

Despite evidence that sunscreen can protect against less lethal forms of skin cancer, its effect on the incidence of rarer but often deadly melanoma has remained unclear.

"People who are at naturally higher risk of melanoma are also naturally the people who use sunscreen," said Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) Professor of Epidemiology Adele Green, who’s unique study, which tracked a group of just over 1600 residents in Nambour, Queensland, showed how wearing sunscreen every day cut their incidence of melanoma in half.

The adults were randomly allocated to either a control group - who continued as per normal and wore as much or as little sunscreen as they liked - or a group given an unlimited supply of sunscreen who were asked to apply it every morning to their head, neck, arms and hands and the trial ran for five years to 1996.

Monitoring over the next 10 years identified 22 cases of melanoma in the control group, and 11 cases among those who wore sunscreen every day. Professor Green said while the result appeared to be conclusive it was too early to declare the sunscreen-melanoma debate as over.

There are more than 10,000 cases of melanoma diagnosed every year in Australia, which shares the world's highest incidence of melanoma along with New Zealand. The paper is published on Tuesday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. – AAP

The National Plan for Child Cancer Services in New Zealand, developed by the Ministry of Health and the National Health Board in conjunction with District Health Boards (DHBs) and the Paediatric Oncology Steering Group addresses the challenges of providing high quality child cancer services nationwide, given the small number of patients and their wide geographic spread in New Zealand.

Approximately 150 new cases of child cancer are diagnosed each year, with just over 320 children receiving active therapy at any one time. Three options for a service delivery model were evaluated with the best option two specialist centres, one at Auckland DHB and one at Canterbury DHB, with shared care arrangements with other DHBs.

A nationally agreed service delivery model will provide:

  1. equitable access to the appropriate level of service
  2. certainty for parents, families and whanau regarding the patient pathways, location(s) of children’s treatment and support resources available when they need to travel to another location
  3. clarity for District Health Boards (DHBs) and other service providers as to the referral pathways for all children suspected of cancer
  4. sustainable child cancer services in New Zealand into the future.

http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/indexmh/national-plan-child-cancer-services-nz-nov2010