Make sunscreen VAT-exempt, dermatologist says
Doctors seeing between 120 and 150 melanoma cases per year
Sunscreen should be VAT-exempt to make it more affordable amid a rise in skin cancer cases, according to a leading dermatologist.
Laurence Scerri, president of the Maltese Association of Dermatology and Venereology, said the medicinal value of sunscreen meant that it made sense to treat it like other pharmaceutical products that are VAT-exempt.
“The benefits of sunscreen are undisputed. It reduces UV damage to the skin, especially in a sunny country like Malta where people do both leisure and work activities outside. And yet it’s very expensive,” he said.
“The burden of treating skin cancers on the health budget is also great,” he added.
Scerri said that doctors were seeing an average of between 120 and 150 cases of melanoma – the deadliest form of skin cancer – every year.
According to data from the National Cancer Registry, the number of cases of all types of skin cancer in Malta has nearly doubled in a decade, rising from approximately 650 cases in 2010 to nearly 1,170 in 2020.
A recent study in the Malta Medical Journal revealed that nearly half of skin cancer patients who had undergone surgery still did not use sunscreen, a third did not wear any protective clothing such as hats and one in six failed to avoid the midday sun.
Scerri said that over the years, his association had carried out several campaigns to encourage people to protect themselves from sun exposure, as well as to increase early detection through testing and increasing awareness of symptoms.
“But the government also needs to do its part and put its money where its mouth is,” he said.
Scerri advised the public to use sunscreen at factor 50 or higher and to reapply sunscreen every three hours.
“Anything lower than factor 50 only prevents UV damage for a very small amount of time,” he said.