World Health Organization says 1 in 5 people globally will develop cancer in their lifetime
NEW YORK (WABC) -- The World Health Organization released sobering new estimates on the global burden of cancer.
The WHO says one in five people globally will develop cancer in their lifetime.
One in nine men and one in 12 women will die from it.
The most common types of cancer are lung, breast, colorectal, prostate, and stomach.
In 2022, there were 20 million new cases and 10 million deaths.
The most common cancers causing deaths were lung, colorectal, liver, breast, and stomach.
Access to care depends largely on where patients live.
Disparities across countries remain stark. For example, countries such as France, UK, USA, Australia, and Norway saw a higher number of new breast cancer cases in women (1 in 10) but a lower death rate (1 in 100) compared to countries such as Jamaica, Cameron, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and Ethiopia which saw a lower number of new breast cancer cases in women (1 in 20) but a higher death rate (1 in 30).
The lower new breast cancer rates in low-middle-income countries may also be due to less infrastructure to screening and diagnosis.
"We expect the global population of the world to rise from 8 billion currently in 2022 to almost 10 billion, 9.7 billion, by 2050 and this will have a large impact on the number of new cancer cases. So, we predict based on the projected changes in population, growth, and aging worldwide there will be over 35 million new cancer cases by the year 2050, a 77% increase from the 20 million estimated in 2022," Dr. Freddie Bray, Branch Head of Cancer Surveillance at the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), said in an embargoed press conference.
"You will see 142% increase in cancer cases predicted by 2050 in low HDI (human development index) countries, these are the countries with the fewest resources to manage the present cancer burden. Potentially we will see a doubling of the cancer burden in these settings to 2 million by 2050" Bray added.
Dr. Darien Sutton joined the Eyewitness News Mornings @ 10 team to explain the data and what it means going forward.
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