More and more people are developing cancer worldwide
Published: Thursday, Feb 1st 2024, 14:00
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The number of cancer cases is rising worldwide. 20 million new cancer diagnoses were made in 2022 and the number will increase by 77 percent to 35 million per year by 2050, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reported on Thursday.
Around one in five people will develop cancer in their lifetime. One in nine men and one in twelve women die from it.
According to the IARC, the reasons for the expected increase include population growth and the fact that people are living longer and longer. In addition, there are increased risks due to changes in lifestyle. Tobacco and alcohol consumption and obesity play a role here, as does air pollution.
The agency, based in Lyon, France, is part of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva. Two years earlier, in 2020, 19.3 million cancer diagnoses were made according to an earlier IARC report. However, the agency emphasizes that direct comparisons are difficult because the survey methods are constantly being updated.
Almost 10 million cancer deaths in 2022
According to the IARC, 9.7 million people died from cancer in 2022. The most common types of cancer were lung, breast and colorectal cancer. In women, breast cancer is the most common form, followed by lung and colorectal cancer. In men, lung cancer was the most common form, followed by prostate and colorectal cancer. The IARC analyzed data from 185 countries.
Lung cancer was diagnosed in 2.5 million people in 2022. That was 12.4 percent of all recorded cancer cases. 2.3 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer, which corresponds to 11.6 percent of all cancer cases. Colorectal cancer was diagnosed in 1.9 million people (9.6 percent). This was followed in frequency by prostate and stomach cancer.
Lung cancer was also responsible for the most cancer deaths: 1.8 million. According to IARC data, this corresponds to 18.7 percent of all people who died from cancer in 2022. 900,000 people died from colorectal cancer (9.3 percent) and 670,000 from breast cancer (6.9 percent). According to the IARC, the number of people still alive five years after a cancer diagnosis was 53.5 million in 2022. In 2020, this figure was 50.6 million according to the IARC report at the time - but here too, the agency considers direct comparisons to be difficult due to the constant improvement of survey methods.
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