In 2018 there were 401 cases of people with skin cancer in the Balearics. Javier Cortés, president of the Spanish association against cancer (AECC), says that the trend in the number of cases continues to be upward in the Balearics.
The increase hasn't been dramatic, but increase there has been. In 2013 there were 374 cases. The association stresses that melanomas, although aggressive, are treatable and that if diagnosis is made early enough, they can be cleared up that much more swiftly and successfully.
The association, in collaboration with the IB-Salut health service and the Balearic college of pharmacists, launched a prevention campaign on Tuesday. Skin cancer, explains Cortés, is not paid sufficient attention to, "as we think it doesn't threaten our lives". Melanomas, he adds, have increased "because we have lost the historical culture of skin protection". People from northern Europe, in particular, are not "genetically adapted" to the sun levels in Spain.
Tomás Muret, national spokesperson for dermopharmacy, said at the campaign launch that it is most important to protect the most vulnerable people: pregnant women, children and senior citizens who have different complaints for which they take various drugs. These can, he explained, have secondary effects if there is overexposure to the sun. Of the 401 cases in 2018, 279 of them applied to people aged 75 or over.
With children, he added, if they have not had sunburn by the time they are eighteen, they will be highly unlikely to be affected by a carcinoma later in life, so long as they maintain "good habits".