Cancer Rates By Country [Updated 2022]

Written by: Lukas Harnisch-Weidauer

There were an estimated 18.1 million cancer cases around the world in 2020, according to the World Cancer Research Fund International. Of those cases, the United States had the fourth highest number of new diagnoses, with 362 cases per 100,000 people.

These statistics are age-standardized — a summary measure of the rate of disease that a population would have if it had a standard age structure.

Age has a powerful influence on the risk of dying from cancer, and many developing countries have a greater proportion of younger people than countries that are more developed and may have more older than younger people.

Standardization is necessary when comparing populations that differ in respects to age because otherwise countries with older populations would have vastly higher rates of cancer.

What are the countries with the highest cancer rates?

  1. Australia
  2. New Zealand
  3. Ireland
  4. United States
  5. Denmark
  6. Belgium
  7. The Netherlands
  8. Canada
  9. France
  10. Norway

What are the countries with the lowest cancer rates?

  1. Sudan
  2. South Sudan
  3. Djibouti
  4. Timor-Leste
  5. Tajikistan
  6. Republic of Congo
  7. Bhutan
  8. Nepal
  9. The Republic of Gambia
  10. Niger

Highest versus lowest:

  • Australia: 452 per 100,000 people
  • Singapore (lowest in the top 50): 233 per 100,000 people
  • Niger (actual lowest) 78 per 100,000 people

The difficulty of tracking cancer rates

“Recording cancer occurrences and deaths is a very complex task,” says Timothy Rebbeck, PhD, associate director for Dana-Farber’s Center for Cancer Equity and Engagement and researcher in the Division of Population Sciences. “In some countries, there is a good capture of cancer rates.  However, data in many countries data collection is poor, and the rate estimates rely heavily on models. These models make many assumptions. Depending on how off you are with your assumptions, you could be orders of magnitude off the actual rates.”

Rebbeck also says that the accuracy of cancer data can vary depending on the type of cancer. Breast cancer, for example is relatively identifiable, and doesn’t cause immediate death. All of this makes it easier to capture and track than a disease like prostate cancer, which might not come to clinical attention for a long time, if ever.

“In many places, the rates of prostate cancer are estimated to be very low, but that’s just because we don’t see most of them,” says Rebbeck.

Other cancers, like pancreatic cancer, has a high mortality rate, and many patients die before they are diagnosed. That information may not be recorded in the data that researchers work from.

Cancer rates vary by country due to many factors like healthcare access, risk factors, exposures, and prevention strategies, according to Timothy Rebbeck, PhD, associate director for Dana-Farber’s Center for Cancer Equity and Engagement.
Cancer rates vary by country due to many factors like healthcare access, risk factors, exposures, and prevention strategies, according to Timothy Rebbeck, PhD, associate director for Dana-Farber’s Center for Cancer Equity and Engagement.

Why do countries have low cancer rates?

The wide discrepancy in rates of cancer between the countries with the highest rates and the lowest rates is most likely due to insufficient poor data collection in developing nations. Countries like Niger and Sudan do not necessarily have lower rates of cancer; rather, these nations simply do not have the infrastructure to accurately and completely identify and register those cases.

“Some of the issue arises from the data that can be collected,” says Rebbeck. “We have numbers, but mostly — aside from places like the United States and Northern Europe — they’re not very complete.”

It’s estimated that less than 2% of the population of the entire continent of Africa is captured in the cancer data that are available, for example. In contrast, over 85% of the population is captured in cancer registries in North America.

 “When you layer so many factors like healthcare access, risk factors, exposures, and prevention strategies, it is difficult to know why variations in cancer rates occur, particularly when we have limited data with which to understand these factors” Rebbeck continues,

What factors lead to high cancer rates in a country?

There are many factors that may cause higher cancer rates in a country. Many, if not all, are systemic and can be linked back to social determinants of health — the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks.

For example, “populations with better education, higher incomes and lower inequalities, active cancer control policies and programs and high performing health systems have better cancer outcomes as reflected in lower MIRs [mortality to incidence ratio] relative to other populations,” a 2019 report noted.

It is difficult to nail down exactly reasons for different rates among countries, or why Australia and the United States have higher rates versus Israel and Japan, for example. There is no single factor that can explain this difference.

“There are reasons for variation in cancer rates that we can point to, but there are other factors that we either have poor data on or don’t have a complete understanding of,” says Rebbeck.

The World Cancer Research Fund suggests that higher cancer rates are impacted by diet and lifestyle factors. For example:

  • Consuming enough wholegrains, vegetables, and fruit can decrease risk of developing colorectal and prostate cancers.
  • On the other hand, overconsumption of alcohol increases the risk of oral, esophageal, breast, colorectal, stomach, and liver cancers.
  • Being physically active has been found to decrease the risk of colon, breast, and endometrial cancer.

“It has to do with patterns of exposure to many things like obesity, smoking, sedentary lifestyle, and a poor diet,” says Rebbeck. “Those factors are big drivers of high cancer rates. Since these exposures are changing in Africa and other regions to look more like exposures in developed nations, we can guess that cancer rates in many parts of the world will increase in the coming years.”

Risk factors can significantly impact rates of cancers across countries. Rebbeck — whose work mainly focuses on African nations — points out that people in northern Africa smoke more than people in sub-Saharan Africa. This has led to higher rates of lung cancer in northern Africa.

In some cases, high rates of certain types of cancer are also tied up in the lack of preventative measures. In the developing world, cervical cancer is a leading cause of death for women, while it isn’t a threat in places like the United States where HPV vaccines and screening measures are widely available.

However, it is again important to note that access to these diet and lifestyle choices that can reduce risk — and the ability to make changes — is not even across the board.

43 thoughts on “Cancer Rates By Country [Updated 2022]”

  1. Such BS

    Half the nations of the world don’t even get people in to be diagnosed let alone treated.

    You show incredibly bad third world nations in Africa where people die daily from malnutrition as having the lowest cancer rates and we are to use that information as if it is of some importance?

    In a highly developed society with significant resources available to en educated population, one would hope diagnosis and treatment would be at very high levels if not for the availability of those procedures.

    The conclusions drawn from this are specious at best. Reminds one of global warming stats. Total without true merit. Designed to fit an already existing hypothesis.

  2. Niger diet (from wikipedia): “The cuisine of Niger takes after many traditional African cuisines, and a significant amount of spices are used in dishes. Grilled meat, seasonal vegetables, salads and various sauces are some of the foods consumed.

    Meals in Niger usually start with colorful salads made from seasonal vegetables. Typical Nigerien meals consist of a starch (rice being the most popular) paired with a sauce or stew. The stews are usually made with vegetables because meat is very scarce. The starches eaten most often are millet and rice. Staple foods include millet, rice, cassava, sorghum, maize and beans.[1][2] Couscous is saved for special occasions. Porridge, wheat dumplings, and beignets are some of Niger’s popular snacks.[3]”

    Notice “meat is very scarce.”

  3. The human body is largely red meat. There is little nutritional similarity between factory beef, and say elk or deer meat. It’s not the red meat that is the problem, rather what the “meat” ate, or was forced to eat.

    Wikipedia aflatoxin entry states aflatoxin eaten by cows can transfer to those who eat its meat. Where does aflatoxin come from? CEREAL GRAINS largely! It is among the most to toxic and carcinogenic substances found in nature. Factory beef is forced to eat this unhealthy grain diet on the feed lot to fatten it up. When this began, it even killed the cows, hence the antibiotics added to the grain. Oh gee, now there’s that too. Plus the inflamatory stress hormones produced in the cow in the crowded feed-lot.

    Now, compare to natural red meat from animals who ate and leisured as they were meant to, including cows..

    100% pastured, grass fed, never-fed-grain bears little resemblance to factory beef, or elk, or deer.

    When you see someone ranting about “red meat” being unhealthy, which it is not, you can immediately assume they have a bias or agenda, just as the researcher’s epidemiological NON-science did. Grouping all red meat into one category is your first clue.

    Proper red meat is very healthy, whole grains are very unhealthy. The upside-down food pyramid diet guidelines have closely correlated to the exploding chronic disease rates in this country.

    I’m just sayin!

  4. Typo. My failure to proofread. Paragraph four of my prior post should read:

    “Like elk or deer, 100% pastured, grass fed, never-fed-grain beef bears little resemblance to factory beef.”

  5. Cancer wasn’t crrated yesterday. The ancient Greeks wrote about it. There are many potential causes for cancer, and it is impossible to identify them all. Cancer is not one disease. but many. It might better be described as an effect. It’s what happens when the DNA in a cell gets corrupted in a specific way and then replicated instead of repaired, and the cells grow out of control. Your body should function better at repairing broken DNA and eliminating these alien cells, but as we age the repair processes of the body slowly break down. Children with the aging disease progeria suffer from all the diseases we attribute to aging, from liver spots to heart disease, stroke, and cancer. Although we will soon cure many forms of cancer with new viral treatment modalities, it is important to remember that we all suffer from the same genetic disease: physical aging. Most of our efforts should go into halting and reversing that disease, whether based on the free radical theoru or the neuro endocrine theory or other models. Cancer gave us a beautiful opportunity to observe a model for fighting physical aging. Cancsr cells, although they have short telomeres, are called immortal cells because they defy the Hayflick limit and can replicate and live on forever. This is largely due to the production of telomerase, which protects the telomeres from free radical damage. Telomerase is itself not a carcinogen, and is found naturally occuring in astragalus. We can conquer the disease of aging as well as all cancers. It can happen in your lifetime. The adeno associated virus serotype 2 has already shown us how to kill cancer. Now let’s cure aging.

  6. Wow.. Nice to know that those country where cancer rate is lowest, has low standard quality of living or the majority of citizens are middle-class while most country where cancer rate is highest are 1st-world country where the majority of citizen has highest standard of living which are envied by people from 3rd-world countries. I guess it has something to do with the diet and lifestyle. 🙂

  7. They should have done this by countries with the same life expectancy. Curve for that and you get a better understanding of what may be preventing cancer. Likely goes back to diets and overblown chemical industries.

  8. My father died due to blood cancer, he was +85 he was very fit, no sugar, no blood pressure, no cholesterol. But he was diagnosed blood cancer, acute leukemia, he lived one year after diagnosis, he lived 1 year healthy life just with blood transfusion. He was admitted with acute obstruction of stomach with unbearable pain, fainted very in 2 or 3 days never came back. His life style was village life with hard working mostly eat bionic food milk, and meet. He was fond of deer hunting which was common in our desert type villages. His friend also died due to blood cancer with same surroundings, he was also fond of deer hunting and eat the deer as my father, he died around +90, his all other organs were healthy no sugar no blood pressure, etc, my fathers 2nd friend also died due to blood cancer, he was also fond of deer hunting and eating deer meat, he died in young age around 50. I am not relating deer meat with blood cancer. But just putting the similarities to assess the rising situation of Blood Cancer, i have also doubts that some type of controlled radiation instrument can create blood cancer, or some medicine good for one disease can generate other disease blood cancer.

  9. The reason why many developed countries has many people who have cancer is because of their toxic foods and smoking level in youth is high,that why they are likely to get it in their old age,we should more often think about our daily diet and take care of ourselves.

  10. Randy, Very astute point re: grains & chronic inflammation. Could you point me in a research info. direction, stats., etc. A new example although short term in nature, is the inflammation effect of a PRP proceedure used to heal many injuries. For a short time, blood work goes off the scale with very elevated PSA & CRP(C-reactive protein) numbers. Send any info. to pneall@gmail.com.

    Thank you in advance. Hope you read this. P

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