India's cancer mortality ratio highest among top 10 cancer-affected nations

The Union Budget 2025-26 announced several steps to tackle the growing burden of cancer in India. This included establishing day care cancer centres in all district hospitals over the next three years, and the full exemption of life-saving cancer treatment drugs from basic customs duty (BCD). In this context, it becomes imperative to study the magnitude of the problem - cancer as a public health crisis in the country. 

 

A recent study by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has revealed that three out of five Indians diagnosed with cancer ultimately succumbed to the disease in 2022. Based on the Global Cancer Observatory (GLOBOCAN) 2022 data, India ranked third behind China and the United States in terms of absolute number of cancer incidences globally, according to the study published in ‘The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia’.

 

 

The mortality-to-incidence ratio for India (ratio of cancer mortalities to cancer incidences) was 64.47 per cent in 2022, the highest while comparing the top 10 countries with the highest number of cancer incidences. Indonesia (58.66 per cent), China (50.57 per cent) and Russia (47.34 per cent) follow behind India. The US, despite having a greater number of cancer incidences than India, had a mortality-to-incidence ratio of 23.81 per cent which is significantly lower than India.

 

India witnessed 8,89,742 cancer deaths in 2022, second behind China which had 2.32 million deaths. 

 

Breast cancer was the most prevalent cancer in females with 31.1 per cent of new cases, followed by cervical (19.6 per cent) and ovarian (7 per cent) cancer. Furthermore, breast (24 per cent) and cervical cancer (20.6 per cent) were also the leading causes of cancer-related mortalities in females.

 

Among males, oral cancer was the most commonly diagnosed cancer (24.3 per cent) and the leading cause of cancer-related mortality (21.6 per cent).

 

Gender distribution of cancer incidences and mortality in India highlighted that the female crude incidence rate (CIR) in the reproductive age group (60.08) was significantly higher vis-à-vis the male CIR of 37.25 in the same age group in 2022. On the other hand, male CIR for individuals aged 70 or more was 640.08, considerably higher than geriatric (above 70 years) female CIR of 456.02 in 2022.

 

On similar lines, crude mortality rate (CMR) for females in the reproductive age group (27.65) was greater than the male counterpart (20.87), but in all the other age groups, male CMR outdid female CMR. Crude Incidence/Mortality Rate refers to the proportion of total cancer incidences/mortalities out of total population expressed per 1,00,000 individuals.  

 

The study also projected India to witness an annual increase of 2 per cent in cancer incidence-related mortalities in the coming two decades, as its population transitions from the reproductive age group (15-49 years) to the middle-aged (50-69 years) and geriatric (above 70 years) counterparts.