THE winter of 2017/18 saw the highest number of deaths in Fife in the last 11 years.

And the director of public health, NHS Fife's Dona Milne, said it had more to do with a "poor vaccine match" for flu than the freezing cold weather brought to the Kingdom by the 'Beast from the East'.

In her annual report, she said: "It is widely acknowledged that more deaths occur in the winter months and the overall long-term trend in these deaths has been decreasing.

"However, the winter of 2017/18 saw the highest number of winter deaths in Fife in the last 11 years, a trend also observed for Scotland as a whole.

"In the four months between December 2017 and March 2018, there were 1,622 deaths in Fife, which was 370 greater than the average number of deaths in the four months prior to and after this period."

The Beast from the East struck Scotland in the early part of 2018 with heavy snow, strong winds and bitterly low temperatures causing chaos across the country. The severe weather led to flights, train and bus services being cancelled and closed thousands of schools and nurseries.

However, the rise in winter deaths has been attributed to flu.

Ms Milne continued: "These deaths result from a combination of causes, however, modelled data at a national level indicates that flu explained much of the excess mortality in 2017/18, particularly for the elderly where there was a poor vaccine match to the circulating flu strain in Scotland.

"Low temperatures did not explain the excess."

There were 4,189 deaths in Fife for the whole of 2017, up three per cent from the previous year and the third consecutive annual increase.

The majority – 63 per cent – occurred in those who were aged 75 and over, however, death rates are much higher in Fife's most deprived areas.

Ms Milne said: "Greater inequalities are seen in the rates of death among those aged 15-44 in Fife.

"Currently, death rates in the most deprived areas are more than four times those in the least deprived areas with rates of death from suicide and drug-related causes being highest within this age group."

Cancer remains the biggest killer, accounting for 28 per cent of all deaths in Fife in 2017, with lung cancer the most common cause of death by cancer, claiming 363 lives, followed by prostate cancer among men and breast cancer among women.

Heart disease was the second most common cause of death in Fife that year, killing 599 people.

Next was dementia and Alzheimer's disease, which claimed the lives of 485 people.

Life expectancy in Fife is 77 years for men and 80 for women.