CANCER death rates have dropped in Yorkshire and the Humber, Cancer Research UK said.

Death rates show that the proportion of people in the UK who are dying of cancer has fallen dramatically even though more people are being diagnosed with the disease. The rising number of diagnoses is largely due to the UK’s ageing population and cancer being more common in older people.

In 1990, 220 in every 100,000 people in the UK died of cancer. Thanks to research improving the outcome for patients, this fell overall by 22 per cent to 170 per 100,000 in 2011, the charity said.