Spike in Breast Cancer
The World Health Organisation says the number of people diagnosed with cancer in the world has leaped to more than 14 million new cases each year.
The data for 2012 shows a significant rise on the 12.7 million cases diagnosed in 2008.
In that time, the number of deaths has also gone up to 8.2 million in 2012, an increase of more than eight percent on the 2008 figure of 7.6 million.
Researchers say the rise in cancer cases is being driven by a rapid shift in lifestyles in the developing world to more closely reflect industrialised countries.
Rising rates of smoking and obesity as well as people living longer are contributing to the rise.
There has also been a sharp rise in breast cancer rates as the disease takes hold in developing nations that have limited ways to treat the illness.
The figures from World Health Organisation's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) show breast cancer killed 522,000 women last year, up 14 percent from 2008.
Breast cancer cases up 20 per cent in four years
And 1.7 million women were newly-diagnosed with breast cancer last year, up more than 20 per cent from 2008.
"Breast cancer is a leading cause of cancer death in the less developed countries of the world," David Forman, the head of the group that compiles the global cancer data for IARC, said.
"(This is) partly because a shift in lifestyles is causing an increase in incidence, and partly because clinical advances to combat the disease are not reaching women living in these regions."
IARC's report, called GLOBOCAN 2012, gives the most up-to-date estimates for 28 different types of cancer in 184 countries and offers an overview of the global cancer burden.
It has found that the most commonly diagnosed cancers worldwide, in men and women combined, were lung, breast and colorectal cancers.
The most common causes of cancer death were lung, liver and stomach cancers.
Projecting forward, IARC experts say they expect a substantive increase in cancer cases worldwide, with new cases predicted to rise to 19.3 million a year by 2025 as the global population both grows and ages.
"Huge inequalities" between rich and poor countries
Worldwide trends show that in developing countries, the shift towards lifestyles more typical of richer industrialised countries is leading to a rise in cancers linked to reproduction, diet and hormones.
The IARC report says there are huge inequalities between rich and poor countries.
While rates of new cancer cases are still highest in more developed regions, death rates are relatively much higher in less developed countries because people's tumours are often not detected and diagnosed early enough due to a lack of screening and access to treatment.
"An urgent need in cancer control today is to develop effective and affordable approaches to the early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of breast cancer among women living in less developed countries," IARC's director Christopher Wild said.
He said it was critical to bring rates of disease and death in poorer countries in line with progress made in recent years in treating and curing some cancers in wealthier countries.
One stark example of the inequality is cervical cancer which kills hundreds of thousands of women in Africa each year but can largely be avoided with a vaccine or successfully treated if it is picked up early enough with screening.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 34.8 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed per 100,000 women each year, and 22.5 per 100,000 women die from the disease. That compares with 6.6 and 2.5 per 100,000 women respectively in North America.
"These findings bring into sharp focus the need to implement the tools already available for cervical cancer, notably HPV vaccination combined with well-organised national programmes for screening and treatment," Mr Wild said.
Reported on the Australian News Network 13/12/13
