Investing in skin cancer prevention in Australia could both save lives and significantly reduce the nation’s $2 billion (approx US$1.45 billion) a year in treatment costs, experts say. In a new health economics paper published on Dec. 22 in Public Health Research & Practice, a peer-reviewed journal of the Sax Institute, the authors noted the enormous financial burden of treating skin cancers in Australia, despite the majority of these cancers being preventable and curable. Led by Associate Professor Louisa Gordon of the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, the paper points out that while new systemic treatments for melanoma cost the Australian Government about $500 million (approx US$362 million) in 2020-21, the cost of treating the much more common, but less lethal keratinocyte cancers is far higher, reaching $1.3 billion (approx US$940 million) in 2018-2019. According to cancer.net, melanoma starts in the melanocytes, the cells which give skin its pigment, and …