Costa Rica News – Cancer is the second cause of mortality, after cardiovascular diseases, in Costa Rica. Each year, about 11,500 Costa Ricans receive a cancer diagnosis and about 5,000 die from the disease.
This data is from the National Registry of Tumors of the Ministry of Health and the National Institute of Statistics and Census. 21.5% of deaths in the country are from cancer. One in five Costa Ricans dies from it.
In men, the majority are skin cancers. In women, the most common are in the bones, skin, breast and soft tissues. In both men and women, the tumors of the digestive tract , especially the stomach, are the most deadly.
Data indicates that only 4.6 of every 100,000 children between 1 and 14 years of age die from cancer, whereas in those over 65 years of age the figure jumps to 835.9 per 100,000.
A healthy lifestyle and early detection tests are recommended.
