The USA has the 9th highest diagnoses of skin cancer per capita annually, according to a new report from Derma.plus.

New Zealand had the most cases of skin cancer per capita followed by Australia, Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway, the report showed.

The new report also showed that the best access to skin cancer treatment can be found in Sweden, followed by Switzerland, Italy, Denmark, and Germany. The highest skin cancer mortality rate per capita is seen in Nigeria, followed by Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, and Albania, the new report showed.

The report is divided into two sections: the Skin Cancer Susceptibility Indexanalyses the UV factor, the average population skin-tone and the rate of incidences from a range of countries to identify geographically where the highest rates of skin cancer are most likely to occur. The Socioeconomic Treatment Index cross references national health spending, access to treatment and individual income against mortality rates to better understand the efforts undertaken worldwide to combat the disease.

The results of the susceptibility index showed New Zealand as the nation with the highest incidence and likelihood of melanoma per capita, closely followed by Australia, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway. These outcomes are indicative that a high level of UV exposure, coupled with a lighter skin tone (as calculated by the Fitzpatrick-Scale) led to a higher diagnosis of skin cancer. The US and the UK came in ninth and tenth place respectively, with Ireland close behind in fourteenth position.

The second part of the study, The Socioeconomic Treatment Index, found that countries such as New Zealand and Australia, which have some of the highest incidences of skin cancer, also have some of the lowest death rates due to high levels of health spending (based on data from the World Bank), and closer equality in terms of life quality across society (based on data from the Human Development Index). Conversely Nigeria scored lowest on the Socioeconomic Treatment Index due to higher societal inequalities and lower health spending, which may lead to the high mortality rate. This is despite their previously low rank in the Susceptibility Index. Specifically, Bangladesh is the country with the lowest skin cancer prevalence per capita, however the amount spent on 300 skin cancer patients here is equal to the amount spent on one case in Norway.

Although the incidence rate may be high in countries with a combination of light skin tone and high UV exposure, adequate health care spending, presumably in the form of treatments and prevention education, appears to be effective in keeping the mortality rate lower than in countries with fewer diagnoses, but where less funds are spent on skin cancer prevention.