Breast Cancer Worldwide: Where You Live Shapes Who Survives

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women and the leading cause of cancer death in women worldwide. For women diagnosed in 2017 to 2021, estimated five-year survival from breast cancer itself (net survival, which sets aside other causes of death) ranged from around 4 in 10 in low-income countries to almost 9 in 10 in high-income countries^[1][2].

Behind those figures are women, and some men, who find a change in their body and then wait to find out what happens next. Where they live decides much of the rest: how far away the nearest clinic is, how soon a biopsy can be done, whether surgery, radiotherapy and medicines are available and affordable, and whether anyone is counting what happens to them afterwards. This study draws on the Global Cancer Observatory, the first worldwide survival estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO) and its cancer agency IARC, national registries and the trials behind screening policy.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in 164 of 186 countries

GLOBOCAN 2024, the latest global edition from IARC, estimates 2,434,087 new cases of breast cancer in women in 2024, 11.8% of all cancers diagnosed in both sexes, and 693,660 deaths, 7.1% of all cancer deaths. It is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women in 164 of the 186 countries covered and the leading cause of cancer death in women in 122^[1][3]. The age-standardised incidence rate worldwide was 47.8 per 100,000 women, and the cumulative risk of a diagnosis before age 75 was 5.15%^[1].

WHO estimates that about 80% of breast cancers occur in women with no specific risk factors other than sex and age^[3]. GLOBOCAN puts the share of new cases linked to known non-genetic risk factors at about 20%, led by insufficient physical activity and high body mass index^[1]. That 20% is a modelled population estimate of what prevention could achieve. Such figures do not explain why any one person developed breast cancer, and for most people diagnosed there is nothing they did or failed to do.

Where rates are highest, and where they are rising

Age-standardised incidence was highest in Australia and New Zealand, Northern America and Northern Europe, at 90 to 102 per 100,000 women in 2024. That is about three times the rate in Eastern Africa, South Central Asia and Middle Africa (29 to 33 per 100,000). Mortality followed a different map: the highest death rates, 20 to 25 per 100,000, were in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, and Western Africa; the lowest, 6 to 10 per 100,000, in Eastern Asia and Central America^[1].

Incidence is rising fastest in countries that historically had low rates. Between 2008 and 2017 it rose by 3% to 5% a year in South Korea, Japan, Bahrain, Thailand, China and India, whereas the earlier rapid rises in Northern America, Oceania and Europe had levelled off by the early 2000s. GLOBOCAN links the rise to later and fewer pregnancies, more excess body weight, less physical activity and more alcohol^[1]. An IARC-led analysis in Nature Medicine (2025) found incidence rising by 1% to 5% a year in half of the 50 countries it examined. It projected that, by 2050, new cases worldwide would be 38% higher and deaths 68% higher than in 2022, with the increase falling disproportionately on low-HDI countries; the abstract does not state the model's assumptions^[4].

Women in lower-HDI countries are diagnosed less often but are more likely to die

In 2024 the age-standardised incidence of breast cancer was 60% higher in higher-HDI countries (high or very high on the UN's Human Development Index, HDI) than in lower-HDI countries (low or medium): 54.1 against 33.6 per 100,000 women. Yet the mortality rate was 26% higher in the lower-HDI countries (14.7 against 11.7 per 100,000)^[1]. GLOBOCAN attributes the higher mortality in these settings to late-stage presentation and unequal access to timely diagnosis and effective treatment^[1]. WHO's fact sheet, which does not date the figures, describes the same gap in lifetime terms: in very high HDI countries, 1 in 12 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 1 in 71 will die of it; in low HDI countries, 1 in 27 will be diagnosed and 1 in 48 will die of it^[3].

The first survival figures for every country

In July 2026 WHO and IARC published the first estimates of breast cancer survival for all 194 WHO Member States, for women diagnosed in 2017 to 2021^[2]. The measure is age-standardised five-year net survival: the estimated share of women alive five years after diagnosis if breast cancer were the only possible cause of death. The global median was 77.8%. Median survival rose step by step with national income (World Bank groups), from 41.9% in low-income countries to 60.1% in lower-middle-income, 78.7% in upper-middle-income and 87.3% in high-income countries^[2].

By WHO region, the median ranged from 39.1% in the African Region to 61.0% in the Eastern Mediterranean, 66.3% in South-East Asia, 81.1% in the Western Pacific, 84.0% in Europe and 88.5% in the Americas. Survival was 90% or more in Australia, Japan and ten countries in the European Region, including Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and lowest in Somalia, at an estimated 29.9%. Within the African Region, Mauritius reached an estimated 84.5%, a reminder that the gap is not fixed by geography^[2]. All 194 figures are outputs of a statistical model that combines registry data with indicators of cancer care and health systems; observed registry survival data existed for only 67 countries, and the authors urge caution with estimates for countries that have none^[2].

The African Breast Cancer–Disparities in Outcomes (ABC-DO) study followed women diagnosed at eight hospitals in Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia. Crude survival, which counts deaths from any cause, was 51% at three years, 40% at five years and 33% at seven years. Five-year net survival was 35% to 42% in Zambia and Nigeria, 52% to 58% for Black women in Uganda, South Africa and Namibia, and over 83% for non-Black women in Namibia, treated in the same country^[5]. For how breast cancer survival compares with other cancers across countries, see our study of cancer survival around the world.

In the US, five-year survival falls to one in three when breast cancer is metastatic at diagnosis

The United States has some of the most detailed breast cancer data, so we use its SEER registries as a worked example. Of women diagnosed in 2016 to 2022, 64% had localised disease, 27% regional (spread to nearby lymph nodes) and 6% distant (metastatic), with 2% unstaged. Five-year relative survival, which compares women with breast cancer to women of the same age in the general population, was 100.0% for localised disease, 87.5% for regional and 33.8% for distant disease^[6]. A figure of 100% does not mean no one died; it means survival matched that of similar women without breast cancer. SEER estimates that 4,238,585 women were living after a breast cancer diagnosis in the US in 2023^[6].

The same country, different outcomes

The American Cancer Society's Breast Cancer Statistics 2024, the most recent edition we could find, reports that the US breast cancer death rate fell by 44% between 1989 and 2022, which it translates into 517,900 fewer deaths. But Black women have 38% higher breast cancer mortality than White women despite 5% lower incidence, and are less likely to be diagnosed at a localised stage (58% against 68%). Among American Indian and Alaska Native women, mortality has not fallen since 1990^[7]. The same report finds incidence rising by 1% a year in 2012 to 2021, and by 1.4% a year in women under 50^[7]. GLOBOCAN credits treatment advances with 75% of that US fall in death rates, and mammography screening with the rest^[1]. Our study of stage at diagnosis looks at the same pattern across many cancers.

Screening lowers breast cancer deaths, and also finds some cancers that would never have caused harm

In 2012 an independent UK panel reviewed the randomised trials and estimated a 20% relative reduction in breast cancer deaths among women invited to screening. Over the long term, about 11% of cancers diagnosed in women invited were overdiagnosed: cancers that would never have caused symptoms in the woman's lifetime, but that once found are treated. For every 10,000 women aged 50 in the UK invited for 20 years, the panel estimated 43 breast cancer deaths prevented and 129 cancers overdiagnosed, about one death prevented for every three overdiagnosed cases. The panel stressed these figures are only an approximate guide^[8].

WHO recommends organised, population-based mammography every two years for women aged 50 to 69 at average risk, in well-resourced settings^[1]. In 2024 the US Preventive Services Task Force lowered its starting age, recommending mammography every two years for women aged 40 to 74 (a grade B recommendation). It cited rising incidence at younger ages and modelling showing greater benefit from screening in the 40s, and noted that Black women are about 40% more likely to die of breast cancer than White women^[9].

In many lower-income settings, GLOBOCAN notes, mammography screening is often neither feasible nor cost-effective, so efforts focus on the timely diagnosis of women who come forward with symptoms^[1], paired with treatment that is available and affordable. For how many women take part in screening where it is offered, see our study of cancer screening uptake.

The data serve two groups least well: men, and people living with metastatic breast cancer

Men with breast cancer

WHO estimates that 0.5% to 1% of breast cancers occur in men^[3]. In England, 75% of staged breast cancers in men were diagnosed at stage 1 or 2 in 2023, against 85% in women^[10]. In a US study of more than 1.8 million people in the National Cancer Database diagnosed in 2004 to 2014, five-year overall survival was 77.6% for men against 86.4% for women. After adjusting for clinical features, treatment, age, race and ethnicity and access to care, men still had 19% higher overall mortality (hazard ratio 1.19)^[11]. Overall survival counts deaths from all causes, so part of the gap may reflect other health differences between men and women. Because the numbers are small, men’s results are easily lost inside figures for breast cancer as a whole. Genetic testing after breast cancer, including in men, is covered in our study of inherited cancer risk.

Metastatic breast cancer: the cancer registries count least

Most cancer statistics are built around the first diagnosis and its stage. A breast cancer diagnosed early that later spreads does not appear in stage-at-diagnosis figures, so the number of people living with metastatic disease is far larger than those figures suggest. In the United States only 6% of breast cancers are metastatic when first diagnosed^[6], but a modelling study using SEER data estimated that 154,794 women were living with metastatic breast cancer on 1 January 2017, and that three in four of them had first been diagnosed at stage I to III. The authors note that the true number “is unknown” and that the growing number of people affected “highlights the importance of documenting recurrence”^[12].

Trial data show why recurrence needs counting over decades, not five years. An Early Breast Cancer Trialists' Collaborative Group meta-analysis of 88 trials and 62,923 women with oestrogen receptor-positive breast cancer found that, after five years of hormone therapy, distant recurrences kept occurring at a steady rate from 5 to 20 years after diagnosis. The risk of distant recurrence between years 5 and 20 ranged from 10% to 41%, depending on tumour size, lymph node involvement and grade^[13]. Trial participants are not fully representative of everyone diagnosed. Without population data, people living with metastatic breast cancer can be absent from the figures used to plan services for them.

What the evidence asks of us

Breast cancer deaths can fall steadily. WHO notes that age-standardised breast cancer mortality in high-income countries fell by 40% between the 1980s and 2020, and that countries which have reduced mortality managed 2% to 4% a year^[3]. In its analysis of mortality trends in 46 countries, the IARC-led study found seven, among them Belgium and Denmark, already meeting the WHO goal of a 2.5% fall each year^[4]. The figures point to five priorities.

• Back the Global Breast Cancer Initiative's targets with funding. WHO's initiative aims to cut breast cancer mortality by 2.5% a year, which over 20 years would save 2.5 million lives, through health promotion and early detection, timely diagnosis and comprehensive treatment^[14]. Its benchmarks are at least 60% of invasive breast cancers diagnosed at stage I or II, diagnosis within 60 days of first attending a health facility, and at least 80% of people completing multimodality treatment^[2].
• Pair early diagnosis with treatment. The ABC-DO researchers estimated that reaching the 60% early-stage target together with access to treatment would cut deaths by about a third among Black women in the five African countries studied^[5].
• Build registries where there are none. Only 67 of 194 countries had observed survival data for the 2026 estimates^[2].
• Count recurrence and metastatic disease. Health systems should record when breast cancer returns or spreads, so that people living with metastatic breast cancer are counted and services are planned for them^[12].
• Close gaps within countries. In the United States, Black women's higher mortality and the stalled progress for American Indian and Alaska Native women show that national averages hide unequal access. The ACS authors call for action on disparities, fairer representation in clinical trials and access to high-quality screening and treatment^[7]. Men's outcomes should be reported separately too.

Because screening both prevents deaths and leads to some overdiagnosis^[8], the information sent with each invitation should set out both, so that taking part is an informed choice. More studies on cancer worldwide are in our cancer research library.

Language: this piece says "people with cancer" and "people living with and after cancer", and describes the illness and its treatment plainly, without combat metaphors. Clinical terms such as "stage", "incidence" and "net survival" are used in the sense the cited source defines them.

Why we're publishing this

Breast cancer charities, support groups and hospices make the case for faster diagnosis, fairer treatment and better support every day. They need figures they can trust and cite, with the source and year attached, so that their case rests on the strongest evidence available. The case is theirs, and the people they support should be visible in the data, including men and people living with metastatic breast cancer.

How to read this data

• Incidence, mortality and survival are different things. Incidence counts new diagnoses; mortality counts deaths in a year; survival follows people from diagnosis. Rising incidence alongside falling mortality, as in many high-income countries, can reflect more cancers found by screening, including some overdiagnosis, as well as better treatment.
• Rates. GLOBOCAN rates here are age-standardised to the world standard population, per 100,000 women, so countries with different age structures can be compared. They are modelled estimates, and the quality of the underlying data varies widely by country. SEER figures are observed registry data for the United States.
• Survival measures differ. The 2026 WHO and IARC estimates are net survival; SEER reports relative survival; ABC-DO reports both crude and net survival; the US men-and-women comparison is overall survival, which counts deaths from any cause. Do not compare them directly.
• Survival describes the past. Five-year figures describe people diagnosed in 2016 to 2022 or earlier and cannot predict any individual's outcome today.
• Projections are not forecasts of fate. The 2050 figures are model projections published in 2025 from 2022 estimates, with assumptions the abstract does not state: a scenario, not a certainty.
• Where evidence is thin. Most detailed data come from high-income countries, especially the United States, England and Europe. Population data on recurrence and on men with breast cancer are sparse everywhere.

Use this data

Free to cite with attribution to Better Health For Everyone. Charities, campaigners and journalists are welcome to reuse these figures and charts. For the underlying figures as a spreadsheet, get in touch.

Important: This article summarises published research for general information. It is not medical advice and cannot be used to diagnose, treat or predict anything about an individual. If you have concerns about your own or someone else's health, please speak to a qualified health professional.

Sources

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