Is Hong Kong winning the war on cancer or facing new battle in late diagnosis?

In the first of a six-part Health Matters wellness series on cancer in Hong Kong, Emily Hung looks into how the city takes on its leading cause of death while maintaining one of the lowest mortality rates in the developed world and what more it must do to excel as a hub for cancer research.When Hong Kong began modern cancer tracking in 1983, it recorded 15,000 new cases and a far higher death rate than today.Four decades on, the number of cases has more than doubled to 38,000, yet the risk of dying from the disease has nearly halved. In 1983, the city’s age-standardised cancer death rate stood at 136.7 per 100,000 people. By 2023, it had fallen to 71.1.