Worldwide cancer data | World Cancer Research Fund International (2024)

FAQs

Which country has the highest cancer survival rate? ›

Australia is the country with the highest cancer survival rate in the world. With an impressive 1,849.8 survivors per 100,000 people, Australia has developed a comprehensive healthcare system with early treatment interventions and preventative measures that aid in boosting survival rates.

You might think that breast cancer is the deadliest cancer for women. Breast cancer is certainly a concern, coming in second only to skin cancer as the type of cancer most common in women, according to the CDC. But the type of cancer most lethal for women – as well as men – is lung cancer.

How Many People Die of Cancer by Sex and Race/Ethnicity? Among both men and women, non-Hispanic blacks have the highest cancer death rates, and non-Hispanic Asian/Pacific Islander have the lowest cancer death rates. The death rate for men was 173.2 per 100,000 men per year.

Breast cancer rates

The following table shows total global breast cancer incidence and rates in 2022 for women. France had the highest overall rate of breast cancer in 2022, followed by Cyprus.

In 2019, Kentucky had the highest cancer incidence rate nationwide, over 13% above the national average, while Mississippi had the highest cancer mortality rate, over 20% above the national average.

Brain and pancreatic cancers have much lower median survival rates which have not improved as dramatically over the last forty years. Indeed, pancreatic cancer has one of the worst survival rates of all cancers. Small cell lung cancer has a five-year survival rate of 4% according to Cancer Centers of America's Website.

Each year, more than 13,000 cancer deaths are due to smoking, sun exposure, poor diet, alcohol, inadequate exercise or being overweight. Fortunately, there are a number of simple lifestyle changes you can make to help reduce your risk of cancer.

Rates of breast cancer in the U.S. vary by race and ethnicity. Non-Hispanic white women and non-Hispanic Black women have the highest incidence of breast cancer (rate of new breast cancer cases) overall [324]. Hispanic women have the lowest incidence (see Figure 2.3 below) [324].

A study published in Nature last fall suggests that breast cancer is slightly more common on the left side of the body than it is on the right. That same study also indicates that left-sided breast cancer is more aggressive and associated with poorer treatment outcomes.

What is the major cause of breast cancer almost everyone ignores? ›

These include hormones, lifestyle choices and things in the environment. But it's not clear why some people who don't have any factors get cancer, yet others with risk factors never do. It's likely that breast cancer happens through a complex interaction of your genetic makeup and the world around you.

The most common type of cancer on the list is breast cancer, with 313,510 new cases expected in the United States in 2024. The next most common cancers are prostate cancer and lung cancer. Because colon and rectal cancers are often referred to as "colorectal cancers," these two cancer types are combined for the list.

Five-year survival for the most common 18 cancers remained highest globally for the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, followed by Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, according to data through 2014 from CONCORD-3.

The low incidence rate in North Africa is mainly explained by advances in cervical cancer screening such as regular Papanicolaou (Pap) and human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA testing.