Fabio Girardi, Consultant Medical Oncologist at Veneto Oncology Institute IOV – IRCCS, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Breast cancer is a major threat to women’s health worldwide.
The World Health Organization (WHO) Global Breast Cancer Initiative (GBCI) aims to achieve meaningful reductions in global breast cancer mortality by 2040 – a target that hinges on improvements in survival.
To date, data on cancer survival remain limited in low- and middle-income countries. For the first time, WHO estimated population-based five-year net survival for women diagnosed with breast cancer between 2017 and 2021 for all 194 Member States.
The article was published in Nature Medicine, at the same time as the Global Status Report on Cancer 2026. It is available Open Access.
We used a Bayesian hierarchical statistical model integrating cancer registry data with covariates including stage at diagnosis, access to breast cancer medicines, radiotherapy, and mammography infrastructure density.
Five-year net survival varied widely worldwide during 2017–2021, with a four-fold difference between the countries with the lowest and highest survival. Survival was 39% in the African Region, 61% in the Eastern Mediterranean Region, 66% in the South-East Asia Region, 81% in the Western Pacific Region, 84% in the European Region, and 88% in the Region of the Americas. In more than two-thirds of fragile and conflict-affected countries, survival did not exceed 50%. Estimation uncertainty was higher in countries without observed registry data.
Disparities in survival reflect profound global inequities, calling for action aimed at narrowing gaps in access to care and grounded in the GBCI pillars of early detection, timely diagnosis, and comprehensive cancer treatment.
While these modelled estimates offer a comprehensive overview of variation in breast cancer survival worldwide, strengthening population-based cancer registration in low- and middle-income countries remains a priority to robustly track GBCI progress.
‘Improvements in breast cancer outcomes will be a harbinger of improvements of the whole country’s health system'”
Title: Global breast cancer survival estimates in 2017–2021 to advance the WHO Global Breast Cancer Initiative
Authors: Fabio Girardi, Mary Nyangasi, Charlton Callender, Marie Ng, Saki Narita, Julie Torode, Heba AlSawahli, Sok King Ong, Freddy Gnangnon, Valerie McCormack, Wael Shelpai, Rizu, Lamia Mahmoud, Haidong Wang, André M. Ilbawi
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