Global Cancer Burden
The second largest cause of death worldwide, rising as populations age and screening lags in poorer countries.
Severity score
68.2
Critical · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Cancer causes close to ten million deaths a year, with the fastest growth in low and middle income countries where diagnosis comes late and treatment is scarce. Tobacco, obesity, infection and air pollution drive a large and preventable share of cases. Survival gaps between rich and poor countries are among the widest in medicine.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
92Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
80People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
74Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
4Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
52Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.