(VOR News) – Research suggests that over the next 25 years, breast cancer mortality will rise disproportionately in impoverished nations.
The worldwide breast cancer mortality rate is projected to rise by 68% from 2022 to 2050, leading to an estimated 1.1 million fatalities. A recent study published on February 24 in Nature Medicine indicates that this rise will disproportionately harm low-income countries.
These nations possess a low Human Development Index (HDI) score, which evaluates various factors including life expectancy, educational achievement, and overall quality of life.
The research, conducted by Miranda Fidler-Benaoudia, an adjunct associate professor of medicine at the University of Calgary, revealed that “incidence rates were highest in countries with elevated HDI scores, whereas nations with lower HDI faced disproportionately higher mortality, underscoring disparities in early detection, timely diagnosis, and access to comprehensive breast cancer treatment.”
The researchers arrived at this conclusion.
The researchers’ findings indicate that the World Health Organization’s (WHO) objective of a 2.5% average annual decrease in breast cancer mortality has not been achieved.
The researchers assert that decreasing the incidence and mortality of breast cancer can be achieved by “primary prevention, which entails identifying modifiable risk factors and executing a coordinated effort with political resolve.”
The researchers contend that sustained investment and enhancement in early detection and treatment are essential, especially in low- and medium-HDI countries, to alleviate the adverse impacts of breast cancer for the millions of women anticipated to be diagnosed in the forthcoming years, as well as to bridge the widening survival disparities.
The latest paper provides an update on the WHO’s Global Breast Cancer Project, initiated in 2021.
The study’s researchers utilised a global database that tracks cancer diagnoses and mortality across 185 nations. The Global Cancer Observatory is a worldwide database. In 2022, an estimated 2.3 million new cases of breast cancer are anticipated, resulting in 670,000 fatalities.
Moreover, specialists ascertained that “every minute, four women globally receive a breast cancer diagnosis, and one woman succumbs to the illness.” “In 2022, breast cancer was one of the top five causes of cancer-related mortality and continues to be the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women.”
Researchers found that rich nations had more newly diagnosed breast cancer.
The lifetime probability of developing breast cancer was highest in France (1 in 9) and North America (1 in 10).
Researchers in developed nations assert that enhanced screening procedures facilitate the early detection of individuals at risk for particular diseases. Researchers found that nations with a high human development index (HDI) exhibit a higher prevalence of recognised risk factors.
Risk factors encompass nulliparity or a limited number of pregnancies, advanced maternal age at first childbirth, infrequent lactation, delayed menarche, obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, excessive alcohol intake, hormonal contraceptive use, and historically, hormone replacement treatment post-menopause.
Africa and Fiji exhibited the greatest lifetime breast cancer mortality rates among women, with ratios of one in 47 and one in 24, respectively. Women in each of these regions face risk.
The research identified several structural, economic, and social factors that contribute to poor rates of treatment initiation and completion, along with diagnostic delays.
The review states that the financial burden of direct and indirect out-of-pocket expenses for diagnosis and treatment, often in situations where women lack primary authority over household spending, discourages them from seeking diagnosis and obstructs their access to life-saving treatment during critical early stages.
This word denotes a widespread deficiency of health insurance coverage in several low- and middle-income nations.
Only seven nations—Malta, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Slovenia—are surpassing the World Health Organization’s goal of reducing breast cancer mortality rates by 2.5 percent annually, even though the disease seems to be declining in thirty countries.
Decreased alcohol use (4% to 16%), obesity (8% to 28%), inadequate physical activity (2% to 10%), and hormone therapy utilisation (3% to 4%) could avert roughly 25% of breast cancer instances.
Research indicates that prolonging the lactation period may reduce breast cancer incidences by an additional 4%.
SOURCE: USN
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