The total number of deaths from cancer was 44,100 in 2013, surpassing the number of deaths from cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks and stroke.

‘Globally, cardiovascular diseases are a bigger killer than cancer but the case in different in Australia.’

The total number of deaths from cancer was 44,100 in 2013, the institute said, for the first time surpassing the number of deaths from cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks and stroke. 




Lung cancer is Australia's most common fatal cancer. "People are now living long enough to get cancer in greater numbers," said Professor Lisa Horvath, director of research at the Chris O'Brien Lifehouse cancer hospital in Sydney.
"Age is the biggest risk factor, apart from smoking, for getting cancer." Globally, cardiovascular diseases are a bigger killer than cancer, according to the World Health Organization.
Australia is doing better than Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development averages for life expectancy and infant mortality. But on both counts, the figures for indigenous Australians lag badly behind developed-world averages.
While the gap is narrowing, there remains a profound disparity in health scores between Aborigines, who comprise three percent of Australia's population, and their non-indigenous counterparts.
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"Housing, education and poverty do have a very great effect on health and in all of those things there's still a long way to go until Aboriginal people can enjoy the same health as the rest of the population."
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