Which cancers are most common in Hong Kong, and which kill the most? The 2023 incidence and mortality figures, side by side

Last updated: 2026-09-13

The HKCaR's Overview of Hong Kong Cancer Statistics of 2023 (August 2025) records 37,953 new cancer cases and 14,867 cancer deaths. Lung cancer is first on both lists; breast cancer is second for incidence and fifth for mortality; liver cancer is fifth for incidence and third for mortality. The incidence list and the mortality list are not the same list, and the people who died in a given year are not a follow-up cohort of that year's new cases, so the two numbers cannot be divided to produce a case fatality rate or an individual prognosis. The Centre for Health Protection's more recent cause-of-death table gives 15,368 deaths from malignant neoplasms in 2025, which are provisional figures. Comparing years requires the definition and the data status to be kept consistent, and a change between two years is not enough to represent a long-term trend. Over the past decade, the report states, the number of cancer deaths rose by an average of 0.9% a year, but the age-adjusted cancer mortality rate fell. The Government's current cancer screening provision covers cervical cancer, colorectal cancer and a breast cancer pilot programme; separately, the Hepatitis B Co-care Scheme arranges subsidised liver cancer screening on a risk basis for people diagnosed with chronic hepatitis B after joining. A leaflet or a screening recommendation is not the same thing as a population-wide screening programme.

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#Who publishes Hong Kong's cancer figures, and what do "incidence" and "mortality" each mean?

The cancer-specific figures cited in this article all come from the Hong Kong Cancer Registry, which sits under the Hospital Authority. On page 1 of the Overview of Hong Kong Cancer Statistics of 2023 the Registry accounts for its own data sources and data quality:

The HKCaR has been a reliable source of population-based cancer data for research and healthcare planning in Hong Kong. Despite cancer reporting being voluntary, strong support from healthcare professionals and institutions has secured high-quality data from various sources, with registration coverage reaching 97% each reporting year. Over 85% of cases are morphologically confirmed, and less than 1% rely solely on information from death certificates, meeting the rigorous standards set by the IARC.

"Incidence" and "mortality" are two different sets of figures. The Registry's Glossary defines them:

Incidence
Cancer incidence is the number of new cancer cases arising in a specified population over a given time period. It can be either expressed as an absolute number of cases per year or as a rate per 100,000 persons per year.

Mortality
Cancer mortality is the number of cancer deaths occurring in a specified population over a given time period. It can be either expressed as an absolute number of deaths per year or as a rate per 100,000 persons per year.

⚠️ The same glossary also states that one class of cancer is excluded from both sets of figures: "(Note: The cancer incidence and mortality published in the HKCaR website DO NOT include the cases of carcinoma in-situ.)" (The same entry defines carcinoma in-situ as "non-invasive and the earliest form of cancer".)

Two organisations also have to be kept apart. The Registry publishes the cancer-specific figures, and its most recent year is 2023; the Centre for Health Protection publishes the number of registered deaths for the whole of Hong Kong by leading cause of death, which already runs to 2025, and the note to that table reads "# Provisional figures." with the column headed "2025 #". Both sets of death figures are compiled under the same ordinance — the Cancer Registry's table note states: "Sources of mortality data: Deaths registered under the Births and Deaths Registration Ordinance (Cap. 174, Laws of Hong Kong) during the specified period".

For 2023 the two sides agree: the Centre for Health Protection's table prints 14,867 on the malignant neoplasms row for 2023, and the Cancer Registry's figure for cancer deaths in 2023 is also 14,867.

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#Why are the cancers diagnosed most often not the ones that kill the most?

One list counts new diagnoses and the other counts deaths from cancer in that year, and they do not cover the same group of people. Cancer type, stage and treatment all affect prognosis, but the annual tables of new cases and deaths on their own cannot be used to calculate a case fatality rate for each cancer.

Page 4 of the Overview of Hong Kong Cancer Statistics of 2023:

1.4. The top five most common cancers were lung (6,111 cases or 16.1%), breast (5,603 cases or 14.8%), colorectum (5,467 cases or 14.4%), prostate (3,031 cases or 8%), and liver (1,700 cases or 4.5%), accounting for 58% of all new cancer cases. Breast cancer, including 18 male cases, became the second most common cancer, overtaking colorectal cancer for two consecutive years.

Page 6 of the same report:

2.2 The top five cancers causing deaths were lung (3,880 deaths or 26.1%), colorectum (2,266 deaths or 15.2%), liver (1,408 deaths or 9.5%), pancreas (918 deaths or 6.2%), and breast (834 deaths or 5.6%), making up about 63% of all cancer deaths.

⚠️ The paragraph immediately after that is the breakdown by sex, and has to be read alongside it:

2.3 For men, the leading causes of cancer deaths were lung (29.2%), colorectum (15.7%) and liver (12.1%), accounting for about 57% of cancer deaths. For women, the leading causes were lung (22.0%), colorectum (14.7%) and breast (13.1%), making up about half of all cancer deaths.

The gap between the two lists: breast cancer is second for incidence and fifth for mortality, liver cancer is fifth for incidence and third for mortality. Liver cancer had 1,700 new cases and 1,408 deaths, breast cancer 5,603 new cases and 834 deaths. These are two measures of annual burden, not a direct comparison of survival after diagnosis.

Doing the arithmetic (this site's own calculation from the figures quoted above, not a figure the report prints): lung 3,880 + colorectum 2,266 + liver 1,408 = 7,554; 7,554 ÷ 14,867 = 50.8%. That is, those three cancers accounted for about half of all cancer deaths in 2023. ⚠️ The report itself never prints "50.8%" — what it prints is the three components, 26.1%, 15.2% and 9.5%, and the combined "63%" for the five most fatal cancers. The sum above is this site's own, and must not be treated as a statement by the Hong Kong Cancer Registry.

#The ten most common cancers in 2023 (incidence)

#The ten leading causes of cancer death in 2023 (mortality)

How are the crude incidence and crude mortality rates in the two tables calculated? This is what the Registry's "Top Ten Cancers" page prints beneath the two tables:

Crude rates* of incidence and mortality are expressed per 100,000 population. Rates for gender-specific sites are per 100,000 male or female population. The figures from 2017 to 2019 have been revised based on the population benchmark from the results of the 2021 Population Census.

The crude rates in the two tables are generally per 100,000 population; for sex-specific sites such as prostate, corpus uteri and ovary, the denominator is the corresponding male or female population. The all-sites row includes cancers outside the top ten, so the ten rows do not add up to the total. The median ages on the all-sites row, 67 years for new cases and 73 years for deaths, come from Appendix I of the Overview; rounding may also mean the individual percentages do not add up exactly.

⚠️ Thyroid cancer is eighth on the incidence list but is not among the top ten for mortality; pancreatic cancer is fourth on the mortality list but is not among the top ten for incidence. Those two statements say only that a cancer is "not in the top ten"; they do not mean that the Registry has published no corresponding figure — this article cites only the two top-ten tables above. On the same set of tables, pancreas is ninth on the male incidence list (557 cases).

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#Are Hong Kong's cancer figures rising or falling? Why are both answers correct?

Because "numbers of people" and "rates" are two different things, and rates further divide into crude rates and age-standardised rates.

Start with the numbers of people. Paragraph 1.8 of the report:

1.8. Over the past decade, new cancer cases have surged by over 31%, with an annual growth rate of 2.7%. In contrast, the overall population grew slowly at an annual rate of 0.5%, while the population aged 65 and older grew much faster at 4.9% per year.

On deaths, paragraph 2.4 of the report says: "Over the past decade, the number of cancer deaths has risen at an annual rate of 0.9%."

Now the rates. The definitions in the Cancer Registry's Glossary:

The crude rate (C, per 100,000 population) is the ratio of the number of people in which the event happens in a specific time period to the population-at-risk.

Standardisation is necessary when comparing several populations with different age structures or for the same population over time in which the age profiles change accordingly. Comparisons with rates from other sources are valid only if they use the same standard population for calculations.

In other words: a crude rate is simply the count divided by the population, so an ageing population will push the crude rate up by itself; an age-standardised rate is the rate after the effect of age structure has been removed.

⚠️ The Centre for Health Protection's "Death rate by leading cause of death, 2001 - 2025" page explains the crude death rate this way:

Since death rates for most diseases are strongly age-dependent and typically increase with age, direct comparisons of crude death rates over time can be highly misleading if the underlying age structure of the population has changed. Therefore, age-standardised death rates for the leading causes of death, which eliminate the effect of changes in age composition, are also presented in the following table to enable valid intertemporal comparisons.

So once age has been adjusted for, what do Hong Kong's cancer figures look like? The two lines are not the same, and cannot be summed up in one sentence.

• Deaths: falling in both sexes. An extract from paragraph 2.5 of the report: "…After accounting for demographic shifts, age-standardised cancer mortality rates have notably declined by 2.8% per year for men and 1.7% for women in the last decade (Figure 3)."
• Incidence: one down, one up. Paragraph 1.10 of the report: "After adjusting for changes in population composition, the age-standardised incidence rate of all cancers slightly decreased for males but showed an increasing trend for females over the last decade (Figure 2)." The average annual percent changes printed in Figure 2 are −0.4% for males and +1.2% for females, both carrying the asterisk that marks a statistically significant change (p<0.05).

The incidence rates in Figure 2 and the mortality rates in Figure 3 are each calculated against the Segi 1960 World Standard Population; the AAPCs in both figures summarise the 2014–2023 trend, and the asterisk denotes p<0.05. This statement about the standard population applies only to the incidence and mortality trends described here; it does not extend to every age-adjusted analysis in the report.

What is a "standard population"? And how can two official documents produce different standardised rates for the same thing? The Registry's Glossary:

Standard population is the age distribution used as weights to create age-adjusted statistics. The most widely used has been the World Standard population modified by Doll et al., (1966) from that proposed by Segi (1960).

An age-standardised rate is calculated using the age weights of a shared reference population, so changing the reference population can produce a different value for the same disease in the same year. The HKCaR incidence and mortality AAPCs quoted above use Segi 1960; the footnote to the Centre for Health Protection's mortality rate table gives the WHO 2001 world standard population instead, and the two are not interchangeable. This article does not list the age-standardised death rates from the latter; the number of registered deaths is not itself a standardised rate either.

Paragraph 4.1 of the Overview refers to age-standardised relative survival, but that paragraph does not name a standard population, so the Segi standard used in the incidence and mortality figures should not be applied to it.

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#Where did Hong Kong's government cancer screening programmes come from?

The three programmes below started in 2004, 2016 and 2021 respectively, and they are different in kind.

The Cervical Screening Programme (2004). The Department of Health's press release of 8 March 2004 records the launch ceremony, at which the Director of Health, Dr P Y Lam, spoke. The release reports his words as follows: "Speaking at the launch of the Cervical Screening Programme today (March 8), the Director of Health, Dr P Y Lam, said cervical cancer could be prevented by regular cervical smears to detect early cell changes and the application of appropriate medical treatment."

The Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme (2016 pilot, made regular in 2018). The Cancer Online Resource Hub records that the Government launched the pilot programme in September 2016 on a public-private partnership model, made it a regular programme in August 2018, and subsidises screening in phases for asymptomatic Hong Kong residents aged 50 to 75. Colorectal cancer ranked third for new cases in 2023 with both sexes combined; the ranking language used in the historical programme descriptions does not supersede the latest statistics.

The Breast Cancer Screening Pilot Programme (Phase I in 2021, Phase II in 2025). The Department of Health's press release of 29 May 2025 states: "Under Phase I of the BCSPP launched in 2021, three Woman Health Centres (WHCs), four Maternal and Child Health Centres (MCHCs) and 18 Elderly Health Centres (EHCs) of the DH provided biennial MMG screening for women aged 44 to 69 with certain risk factors." The same release announces that "Phase II of the Breast Cancer Screening Pilot Programme (BCSPP) will be launched on June 10 to provide subsidised breast cancer screening services to female Hong Kong residents aged 35 to 74 who are at high risk of developing breast cancer".

Policy history does not mean that every programme was drafted by the same body. The Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme website records that the Cancer Coordinating Committee set up the Cancer Expert Working Group on Cancer Prevention and Screening in 2002 to review scientific evidence and formulate local recommendations; the 2004 cervical screening launch release separately mentions the Cervical Screening Task Force. The current disease screening recommendations, the founding history of a service programme and the actual subsidy eligibility have to be read separately.

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#How many of the five most common cancers have a government screening programme?

Colorectal cancer has a regular programme and breast cancer has a pilot programme. The Department of Health's World Cancer Day release of 4 February 2026 lists the Cervical Screening Programme, the Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme and the Breast Cancer Screening Pilot Programme; breast cancer screening being a "pilot" does not mean it is not a cancer screening programme. Department of Health release

The Primary Healthcare Commission separately announced on 26 January 2026 that the Hepatitis B Co-care Scheme would be launched on 7 February, subsidising eligible persons for hepatitis B screening, treatment and liver cancer screening. Liver cancer screening is part of the management arranged on a risk basis for people diagnosed with chronic hepatitis B after joining; it is not population-wide liver cancer screening. Launch release; scheme eligibility and workflow.

Set against the five most common cancers of 2023 (lung, breast, colorectum, prostate, liver), the 2 named documents — the World Cancer Day release of 4 February and the Cancer Online Resource Hub's "Prevention and Screening" page — do not list any population-wide screening programme in operation for lung, prostate or liver cancer. That scope does not rule out research, risk assessment, hepatitis B-related prevention or individual clinical surveillance. Cervical cancer does have a programme, but it is not among the top five cancers of 2023 with both sexes combined. A "Prevention and Screening" heading on a health information leaflet is not an announcement of a subsidised service either.

The three programmes in the table below differ in their conditions and fees. What follows is a summary of official material, not a judgement on any individual's eligibility.

The colorectal eligibility page also lists the years of birth that may join as 1950 to 1976, and describes the programme's target group as aged 50 to 75; people whose identity card was issued by virtue of a permission to land or remain that has since expired or ceased to be valid are excluded. Meeting the age or year of birth does not mean the remaining conditions are automatically met.

The breast cancer pilot programme's eligibility page in fact lists 7 criteria that must all be met: the age range, a valid Hong Kong Identity Card or Certificate of Exemption, eHealth registration, the specified high risk, being asymptomatic of breast cancer, no history of breast cancer, and no mammography screening within the past one year (unless due for screening as advised by her doctor). Identity card holders are also subject to the limit that the permission to land or remain remains valid.

The programme's definition of high risk covers carriers of the listed gene mutations, "as confirmed by genetic testing" — BARD1, BRCA1, BRCA2, CDH1, NF1, PALB2, PTEN, STK11, TP53 — or a strong family history of breast or ovarian cancer as set out on the website, for example "any first-degree female relative is a confirmed carrier of BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations", a relative with both breast cancer and ovarian cancer, a first-degree female relative with bilateral breast cancer, a male relative with breast cancer, or a family history meeting a specified combination of numbers of relatives and ages at diagnosis. Simply describing oneself as "having a family history" may not meet all of the requirements; the full combinations of relatives are as set out on the eligibility page. That page defines a first-degree female relative as a mother, sister or daughter; the definition of second-degree relatives is set out in the footnotes as well. Full breast cancer pilot programme eligibility

The website separately lists 3 categories of women who are not eligible for the programme and are advised to follow up with their doctors: history of radiation therapy to the chest for treatment between age 10 and 30, history of breast cancer, and history of atypical ductal or lobular hyperplasia of the breast. Being at higher risk does not necessarily mean being within the target group of this pilot programme.

The age limits of the cervical screening recommendations are wider than those of the Maternal and Child Health Centre service. The official recommendation for asymptomatic women at average risk who have ever had sexual experience is: aged 25 to 29, screening by cytology every 3 years after two consecutive normal annual screenings; aged 30 to 64, either cytology on the arrangement set out, or HPV testing every 5 years, or co-testing every 5 years. Women aged 65 or above may discontinue screening if routine screenings within 10 years are normal; if they have never been screened, the official advice is still to be screened. Women aged 21 to 24 who have ever had sexual experience and have risk factors for HPV infection or cervical cancer, and other women at higher risk, may need screening or more frequent screening based on the doctor's assessment. Official screening targets and recommendations

The co-payments above are programme rules or dated announcements, not a charge that is the same at every organisation forever. The breast cancer co-payment page states plainly that service providers may adjust the amount from time to time; the additional colorectal consultation fee also varies by doctor. This article does not list any individual provider's quoted price on the day, and does not treat a ceiling as the amount everyone actually pays.

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#After a diagnosis, how should the survival figures be read?

What the Hong Kong Cancer Registry publishes is overall relative survival, not a prediction for an individual patient.

Page 8 of the report states that the study covers "over 370,000 adults (aged 15-99) diagnosed with 20 major solid cancers between 2010 and 2022, with follow-up until the end of 2024", and analyses them using age-standardised relative survival. Paragraph 4.1 groups "all cancers" separately as a single entity excluding non-melanoma skin cancer; the scope of this survival analysis is therefore not identical to the total of new cases quoted earlier, which includes non-melanoma skin cancer.

4.2 The overall 1-year relative survival for all cancers combined increased from 69.5% in 2010-2013 to 75.2% in 2018-2022. Similarly, the 5-year relative survival improved from 49.1% in 2010-2013 to 55.7% in 2018-2022, marking a 13.4% increase (Figure 5).

From 49.1% to 55.7% is an increase of 6.6 percentage points; the report's 13.4% is the relative increase (this site's own arithmetic from the two values), and the two are not the same. Item 6 of the "Key points at-a-glance" on page 2 of the report also notes that, comparing the same two periods, the relative change in 5-year relative survival was 109.5% for pancreatic cancer, 88.4% for lung cancer and 32.7% for liver cancer. A low baseline can produce a large relative increase, and does not mean that cancer now has the highest survival rate.

The "Key points at-a-glance" on page 2 of the report gives the two ends of the 5-year survival range for the 2018–2022 diagnosis group:

• Best Prognosis: Thyroid cancer (92.4%), Female breast cancer (86.0%), and Prostate cancer (84.2%)
• Poor Prognosis: Pancreatic cancer (13.2%), Oesophageal cancer (16.3%), and Gallbladder & extrahepatic bile duct cancer (17.7%)

⚠️ The item immediately after that: "(7) Factors Driving Survival Improvement: Advance in treatment, earlier diagnosis and lifestyle changes (e.g. reduced smoking) have all contributed for certain cancers."

⚠️ Page 15 of the report prints two limits on the use of the data:

1. Cancer surveillance data are key for understanding the burden of cancer on local healthcare system. It is important to note that these figures may vary each year due to special circumstances. Reliable insights into trends in various indicators require observation over a longer period, ideally at least 5 years or more.
   2. Survival statistics are derived from data on patients diagnosed in the past and may not reflect each individual's situation.

When the latest year differs, sort out the data status first. The HKCaR's current Overview covers 2023 figures, with a document date of August 2025, and the website separately lists it under What's New in October 2025; the Centre for Health Protection's death table of 29 July 2026 already gives 15,368 deaths from malignant neoplasms in 2025, marked as provisional figures. The same table also gives 14,867 for 2023, consistent with the HKCaR.

So it is not the case that "figures from different organisations can never be compared": where the definition, scope and version correspond, counts with a clearly stated year can be compared. But provisional figures may be revised, and two end points are not enough to judge a long-term trend. Incidence, mortality and survival are again different measures, and cannot substitute for one another.

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#Common questions

• What is the most common cancer in Hong Kong? According to the Hong Kong Cancer Registry's Overview of Hong Kong Cancer Statistics of 2023, the top five most common cancers in 2023 were lung (6,111 cases or 16.1%), breast (5,603 cases or 14.8%), colorectum (5,467 cases or 14.4%), prostate (3,031 cases or 8%) and liver (1,700 cases or 4.5%). That is a ranking by incidence, not by mortality.
• Which cancer kills the most people in Hong Kong? The same report states that in 2023 the top cause of cancer death was lung cancer (3,880 deaths or 26.1%), followed by colorectum (2,266 deaths or 15.2%), liver (1,408 deaths or 9.5%), pancreas (918 deaths or 6.2%) and breast (834 deaths or 5.6%), the five making up about 63% of all cancer deaths.
• Why do some people say cancer deaths are rising while others say the cancer death rate is falling? Both statements come from the same report: over the past decade the number of cancer deaths rose at an annual rate of 0.9%; after age adjustment, the age-standardised mortality rate over 2014–2023 declined significantly by 2.8% per year for men and 1.7% per year for women. Incidence does not move in the same direction — over 2014–2023 the age-standardised incidence rate had an AAPC of −0.4% for males and +1.2% for females, both marked as statistically significant.
• Do all five of the most common cancers have a government screening programme? No. The Department of Health's release of February 2026 lists the cervical, colorectal and breast cancer pilot programmes; of the five most common cancers, that covers the regular colorectal programme and the breast cancer pilot programme. The Hepatitis B Co-care Scheme separately subsidises liver cancer screening on a risk basis for people diagnosed with chronic hepatitis B after joining. Those two materials — the World Cancer Day release and the Resource Hub's "Prevention and Screening" page — do not list a population-wide screening programme in operation for lung, prostate or liver cancer, which does not mean there is no research or clinical surveillance at all.
• How many people died of cancer in 2025? The Centre for Health Protection's "Number of registered deaths by leading cause of death" table prints 15,368 registered deaths from malignant neoplasms in 2025, first among the leading causes of death, and that column is marked as provisional figures. The same table prints 14867 for 2023, and the Cancer Registry likewise gives 14,867; any comparison has to keep the year and the provisional status, and must not treat two years as a long-term trend.

Related articles:

• Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme
• Breast cancer screening and risk assessment
• Cervical screening methods and services

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#What this article covers

"Not in the top ten" refers only to the two both-sexes-combined tables in Appendix I of the Overview and on the HKCaR "Top Ten Cancers" page; it does not mean the Registry has published no other figures for that cancer. The 50.8% share of cancer deaths for lung, colorectum and liver is this site's calculation of 7,554 ÷ 14,867, not a combined figure published directly by the report.

The finding that no population-wide programme is listed is limited to the 2 materials named above; the Hepatitis B Co-care Scheme is treated separately, on its launch release. The eligibility, exceptions and fees of each service follow that programme's own official pages, and a screening recommendation is not treated as service eligibility. This article does not provide quotations from individual organisations, an individual prognosis, or an individual screening choice. The Chinese edition of the Overview itself notes that the English version prevails in the event of a discrepancy between the Chinese and English texts.

• This is the English edition. The Traditional Chinese edition is the authoritative version of this article. Quotations above are reproduced from the official English text published by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, not translated by this site. Where the Chinese edition quotes Dr P Y Lam directly from the 2004 Chinese press release, the English edition reproduces the English release's own reported wording instead, because the English release does not print that sentence as a direct quotation.

#Sources

• Primary Healthcare Commission, Hepatitis B Co-care Scheme launch release (26 January 2026): https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202601/26/P2026012600288.htm (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Department of Health, World Cancer Day release (4 February 2026): https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202602/04/P2026020400274.htm (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Hong Kong Cancer Registry, Overview of Hong Kong Cancer Statistics of 2023 (English edition; document date: Aug 2025): https://www3.ha.org.hk/cancereg/pdf/overview/Overview%20of%20HK%20Cancer%20Stat%202023.pdf (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• 香港癌症資料統計中心，《2023年香港癌症統計概覽》(Chinese edition; document date: August 2025): https://www3.ha.org.hk/cancereg/pdf/overview/Overview%20of%20HK%20Cancer%20Stat%202023_tc.pdf (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Hong Kong Cancer Registry, "Top Ten Cancers" (top ten incidence and mortality tables; the tabulated data are loaded by that page): https://www3.ha.org.hk/cancereg/topten.html (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Hong Kong Cancer Registry, "Glossary" (crude rate, age-standardised rate, standard population, average annual percent change, carcinoma in-situ, incidence, mortality): https://www3.ha.org.hk/cancereg/glossary.html#crude-rate (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Hong Kong Cancer Registry, homepage "What's New" (updated 27 October 2025): https://www3.ha.org.hk/cancereg/ (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Centre for Health Protection, "Number of registered deaths by leading cause of death, 2001 - 2025" (29 July 2026): https://www.chp.gov.hk/en/statistics/data/10/27/380.html (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Centre for Health Protection, "Death rate by leading cause of death, 2001 - 2025" (29 July 2026): https://www.chp.gov.hk/en/statistics/data/10/27/117.html (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Centre for Health Protection, "Age-standardised death rate by leading cause of death, 2001 - 2025" (29 July 2026): https://www.chp.gov.hk/en/statistics/data/10/27/339.html (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Cancer Online Resource Hub, "Cancers in Hong Kong - Prevention and Screening" (2025-7-14): https://www.cancer.gov.hk/en/hong_kong_cancer/prevention_and_screening.html (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme, "Who may enrol" (Last Revision Date: 2025-01-02): https://www.colonscreen.gov.hk/en/public/programme/who_may_enrol.html (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme, "Government subsidy and co-payment fee" (Last Revision Date: 2018-8-6): https://www.colonscreen.gov.hk/en/public/programme/government_subsidy_and_copayment_fee.html (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme, "Recommendations of the Cancer Expert Working Group (CEWG) on Cancer Prevention and Screening" (Last Revision Date: 2025-3-6): https://www.colonscreen.gov.hk/en/public/about_crc/recommendation_of_the_cancer_expert_working_group_on_cancer_prevention_and_screening.html (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Breast Cancer Screening Pilot Programme, "Eligibility of Participants" (Last Revision Date printed on the website: 15 June 2026): https://www.breastscreen.gov.hk/en/join-the-pilot-programme/eligibility-of-participants/ (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Breast Cancer Screening Pilot Programme, "Co-payment" (Last Revision Date printed on the website: 15 June 2026): https://www.breastscreen.gov.hk/en/join-the-pilot-programme/co-payment/ (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Cervical Screening Programme, "Screening Targets and Recommendations" (no revision date printed on the page): https://www.cervicalscreening.gov.hk/en/recommendations.html (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Department of Health Family Health Service, "Cervical Screening Service" (the page prints "(Content revised 05/2026)"): https://www.fhs.gov.hk/english/main_ser/cs_service.html (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Department of Health press release, "Screening programme to help prevent cervical cancer" (8 March 2004): https://www.dh.gov.hk/english/press/2004/040308.html (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

• Government press release, "DH to subsidise high-risk women for breast cancer screening services from June 10 (with photo/video)" (29 May 2025): https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202505/29/P2025052900401.htm (Last updated: 2026-09-13)

Official figures and programme arrangements may be updated; the announcements of the relevant organisations govern. This article is health information, not medical advice, and cannot make a judgement on any individual case. If you are unwell or in an emergency, seek care in accordance with the guidance of healthcare professionals.