For the first time in ten years, the number of men and women in the US developing and dying from different forms of cancer has dropped, according to a report released this week by the American Cancer Society, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US national Cancer Institute and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.

The report is to be published in the Dec. 3 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. According to it, the decrease in cancer rates is mostly due to fewer cases of lung, prostate and colorectal cancer among men and fewer cases of breast and colorectal cancer among women. Also, death rates from lung cancer have leveled off among women since 2003 most probably because more and more women quit smoking. In fact, smoking is known to cause almost 90 percent of the lung cancers in the world. Lately, however, governments are trying to fight smoking by introducing smoking bans in public places, higher taxes on cigarettes and national campaigns teaching people about the harmful effects of smoking.

Overall, the report found that cancer deaths decreased an average of 1.8 percent a year from 2002 to 2005. Also encouraging is the fact that the number of new cases of cancer also fell, by an average of 1.8 percent a year from 1999 to 2005.

“We are making progress in the fight against cancer. There is a decrease in incidence and death rate for all cancers combined in both men and women and in almost all racial and ethnic groups,” said report co-author Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, director of the American Cancer Society's Cancer Occurrence Office.

He also added that cancer cases would decrease even more if all Americans were insured. This would allow them to seek more medical care and as a result would prevent them from dying from curable forms of cancer.

Annually, about 1.4 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer and an estimated 560,000 die from it.