The growing burden is expected to disproportionately affect developing countries.
Breast cancer diagnoses and deaths are expected to surge worldwide in the coming decades, with some of the highest incidence in Northern Europe, global cancer researchers have warned.
In 2022, 2.3 million women globally were diagnosed with breast cancer and 670,000 died.
One in 20 women will be diagnosed during their lifetime, making it the most common form of cancer for women.
By 2050, global breast cancer deaths are expected to climb by 68 per cent, while new cases will rise by 38 per cent, according to the new projections from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization (WHO).
That would amount to 3.2 million new cases and 1.1 million deaths per year.
“Every minute, four women are diagnosed with breast cancer worldwide and one woman dies from the disease, and these statistics are worsening,” Dr Joanne Kim, an IARC scientist and one of the study’s authors, said in a statement.
Developing countries will be disproportionately burdened, the agency warned.
Yet while death rates have fallen in recent years in Cuba and 29 wealthy countries, only seven countries are meeting global health goals to curb deaths by at least 2.5 per cent each year, the report found.
That includes Malta, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Slovenia. A handful of others are close behind: Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.
If all countries met the 2.5 per cent reduction goal, the number of breast cancer deaths would be nearly halved by 2050, according to the study, which was published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Notably, overall breast cancer incidence rates were highest in Australia and New Zealand, followed by Northern America and Northern Europe, potentially due to risk factors like alcohol consumption and lower exercise levels.
In Europe, the lifetime risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer ranges from 4.9 per cent in Ukraine to 11.1 per cent in France.
The risk of dying from the disease ranges from 1.1 per cent in Norway and Spain to 2.6 per cent in Montenegro.
Mortality is much higher in developing countries – particularly the Pacific Island regions known as Melanesia and Polynesia as well as in Western Africa – reflecting a lack of access to early cancer detection, diagnosis, and treatment, the report found.
In wealthy countries, 17 per cent of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer eventually die from the disease. In developing countries, it’s 56 per cent.
Most breast cancer cases are detected in midlife or later. But in Africa, 47 per cent of cases occurred among women under 50 years old, compared with 18 per cent in North America, 19 per cent in Europe and 22 per cent in Oceania.
Kim said that governments and other groups can help improve breast cancer outcomes by “investing in early detection and treatment,” which could “save millions of lives in the coming decades”.
