KEY POINTS:
Pakeha New Zealanders are increasingly getting skin cancer despite intensive awareness campaigns encouraging sun-smart behaviour.
New Zealand's leading melanoma expert, Professor Jim Shaw, said a recent report showed melanoma cases had levelled out. But if the country's changing ethnic makeup was taken into account, this was not the case.
"We have more Asian and Polynesian people living here now, and melanoma is very rare in non-Caucasian people. If you take Asian and Polynesian people out of the equation, and look at the statistics for European New Zealanders ... [it's] a steady increase."
A report by Professor Shaw, published today in the New Zealand Medical Journal, said that, among Europeans, there were 46 cases of melanoma per 100,000 people in 1996, 50 cases per 100,000 people in 2001 and 54 cases per 100,000 people in 2006.
He said the numbers proved that skin cancer prevention campaigns such as the Cancer Society's slip, slop, slap message were not getting through. Or, he said, it could be too early in the campaign to be seeing positive results due to the time delay between excessive sun exposure and the development of melanoma.
The society launched the campaign in 1983 but it can sometimes take years for melanoma to develop and in adult cases the risk is higher if a person has had sunburn as a child.
The chance of developing melanoma increases with age, but the disease affects people of all age groups.
Professor Shaw said that although New Zealand and Australia had the highest incidence of melanoma in the world, many New Zealanders, particularly older men, were not taking the sun protection messages seriously enough.
"Early detection is absolutely critical with melanoma, but many people ... particularly men over 60, don't get their moles checked at all."
He urged people who noticed any change in a mole or freckle to see a doctor.
