JERUSALEM, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- The breast cancer mortality in Israel has declined by 25 percent since 2005, said a report published Tuesday by Israeli Ministry of Health and the Israel Cancer Association.

A total of 22,481 patients are suffering from breast cancer, the most common malignant disease in Israeli women, which is also responsible for about a third of new cancer cases among women in Israel. Most of the patients are women over the age of 50.

Since 2005, there has been a 2-percent yearly decline in mortality from breast cancer in Israel. The decrease is mainly due to an increase in the rates of early detection in mammography tests.

The rate of mammography performed in Israel for women between the ages of 50 and 69 is 71 percent, compared with the average 60.8 percent in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

The report said that 5,479 new breast cancer patients were diagnosed in 2015, most of which have invasive cancer, in which cancer cells broke into the fatty tissues of the breast and spread to other parts of the body.

In that year, about 1,000 women in Israel died of invasive breast cancer.

The survival rate of women with breast cancer in Israel after five years, among women diagnosed in the period 2005-2009, was 88 percent, slightly higher than the average in the OECD countries.