The numbers are staggering: nearly 21 million people were diagnosed with cancer in 2024, and 9.8 million lost their lives to the disease. Now, a major new global study warns things are about to get worse — much worse — unless the world changes course.
According to a sweeping new analysis from the American Cancer Society and the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the arm of the World Health Organisation that tracks cancer worldwide, annual cancer diagnoses are projected to climb to 34 million by 2050. That’s a 67% jump from today, driven not by some mysterious new risk factor, but by something simpler and harder to stop: the world’s population is growing, and it’s getting older.
Published in the journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, the report paints a picture of a disease that touches roughly one in five people on Earth at some point in their lives. Roughly one in nine men and 1 in 13 women are expected to eventually die from it.
But cancer is not distributed evenly. The study found that diagnosis rates can differ by four to five times depending on where you live, with Australia and New Zealand seeing the highest rates, while parts of Africa and South-Central Asia see the lowest. Death rates tell an even starker story about inequality: women in Western Africa are twice as likely to die of breast cancer as women in Australia or New Zealand, even though they’re diagnosed with it less often. That gap comes down largely to who has access to screening and treatment — and who does not.
Lung cancer remains the world’s biggest cancer killer, still fuelled largely by tobacco, followed closely by breast, colorectal, liver, and prostate cancers.
Yet researchers insist the outlook isn’t hopeless. Lead author Dr Hyuna Sung of the American Cancer Society says nearly half of all cancer deaths could be avoided through changes to modifiable risk factors, with even more preventable through earlier detection and timely treatment.
Co-author Dr Ahmedin Jemal struck a similar note, calling for renewed global efforts around quitting tobacco, limiting alcohol, maintaining a healthy weight, staying active, and avoiding cancer-linked infections — while stressing that every country will need its own tailored strategy, since the disease looks different depending on where you stand in the world.