WASHINGTON — New numbers are out on the global cost of cancer — the deadliest disease worldwide.
Researchers from a number of countries pooled all kinds of data and found that in 2013, there were 14.9 million new cases of cancer, 8.2 million deaths and 196.3 million lost years of healthy life — what they refer to as “disability-adjusted life years.”
The researchers looked at cancer registries, official records and even autopsy reports to come up with the data needed to compile one of the most comprehensive looks to date at the global burden of this disease.
In all, they crunched numbers on 28 different types of cancer in 188 countries. The study — published in JAMA Oncology — concludes that cancer poses a major threat to public health worldwide, particularly in developing countries with health systems that are not up to the job of providing access to complex and expensive cancer treatments.
The data show that globally — as in the United States — lung cancer is the deadliest cancer of all. Internationally, men are more likely to develop lung cancer than women — a gender gap that holds true in overall cases of cancer as well.
The researchers say the numbers show 1 in 3 men are likely to develop some type of cancer at some point in their lives. For women, it is 1 in 5.
