The World Health Organization has said that cancer will be diagnosed in a fifth of all people, but persistent inequities are affecting prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has released its annual global status report on cancer. It explores how “highly inequitable” the “near universal” burden of cancer is and warns that individuals’ experience of the disease and chances of surviving now depend less on stage or biology and more on their location and economic circumstances.  

The 280-page document relied on new data to state that cancer will afflict one in five of us in our lifetime, with 20.6 million people worldwide receiving a diagnosis in 2024. The majority(19.5 million) were new cancer diagnoses, excluding non-melanoma skin cancer, and affected 9.9 million men and 9.6 million women.

Significantly, the number of new cancer diagnoses is expected to hit 35 million per year by 2050. But the WHO feels this “underplays the impacts of the global cancer burden”.

Its new estimates of breast and childhood cancer survival paint a worrying image of global inequalities. In high-income countries, where cancers are likelier to be diagnosed early, five-year net survival now exceeds 85%, but this dwindles below 45% in low-income countries.

The report adds how cancer is increasingly driving premature death, being its leading cause in 2021, across 41 countries.

Worryingly, just 12 countries are on track to meet the target of reducing premature cancer mortality by a third by 2030. Yet 48 countries are experiencing rising rates of premature deaths from cancer, linked to rising cancer burdens.

The WHO pointed to gaps in the system, including “underinvestment in prevention and early detection programmes, persistent inequity in access to diagnostic tests and radiotherapy, insufficient skilled workforces and an imbalanced research agenda”.

Human toll

The WHO also conducted a global survey on the lived experience of people affected by cancer, looking into human, financial and societal impacts. It concluded that across all settings, cancer diagnoses often lead to substantial hardship, including psychosocial burdens, disrupted emotional well-being, mental illness and financial hardship. Carers, too, felt the strain, such as through unpaid services, prolonged grief and social isolation.

Schemes such as tobacco control have been successful, with the WHO Framework Convention for Tobacco Control contributing to a 27% reduction in the prevalence of tobacco use since 2010, but more still needs to be done.

In a similar vein, coverage with the first dose of the human papillomavirus vaccine among girls in the 85% of countries that have the programme is now around 31%. This is an improvement from the 17% reported in 2019, but it is still some distance from the target of 90% by 2030.

The WHO also noted a “spending paradox” where technologies and treatments receive attention and financing, but survivorship and palliative care don’t.

It will continue to flag the inequities faced by too many of those diagnosed with any form of cancer.