Melanoma occurs in several thousand people a year in the UK.

More and more people are being diagnosed with melanoma, but we're not sure why.^[14]

• Every year close to 12,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with a melanoma.

• Around 2,000 people die of it each year.

• Melanoma affects slightly more women than men.

The number of people being diagnosed with melanomas is rising faster than the number of people with most other types of cancer.^[1] This may be because more people know what to look for and are finding melanomas they would have missed 10 years ago.^[15]

But it's probably also true that more people are getting melanomas. There are different ideas about why this may be happening. It may be because:

• People are living longer and getting melanomas when they are older^[1]

• Holes in the ozone layer are letting more damaging sun rays through the atmosphere^[3]

• People are spending more time out in the sun.^[6]

The good news is that the number of people dying of melanoma is not going up as fast as the number of people being diagnosed. This may be because we're finding melanomas earlier, when there's a good chance that they can be cured.^[6] But it's also possible that some of the new melanomas we're finding are a kind that would never have spread anyway.^[15]

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