The 11 countries with the highest cancer rates in the world do show us that we are still standing on the fine line between reducing cancer rates by effective treatments and raising them by the lack of such. While some of the countries on the list are among the 11 countries with the best healthcare in the world, cancer is widespread and difficult to treat disease which can affect anyone in favorable circumstances.
What is more, today’s way of life makes us way more prone to developing cancerous growths than ever. The high pollution and toxicity factor of our resources, the often carcinogenic materials and ingredients in things we put on or inside us and the lots of unhealthy stress we put on our bodies all leave their mark on us. While cancer has been plaguing human existence since before history was recorded, today’s way of life gives way to the malignant mutation of cells. Now, if you have hypochondriac tendencies, you might want to stop reading but looking at it realistically, your body is fighting such mutations at any one given point on a very tiny level, which technically means that if it fails just once, it could spread. However, this is how we all live and in an indirect way, how some of us die.
Even so, don’t abandon all hope for life. Even though cancer is more widespread today than before, it is also more and more effectively treatable. While in the past centuries a tooth infection could lead you straight to the grave, people with even more advanced stages of cancer live to have many tooth infections for years ahead. Paradoxically more lethal and with a better prognosis, cancer today is a big problem in the countries on this list and many of them are putting a lot of resources into fighting it. Let’s look at each of them.
11. Slovenia
Number of age standardized patients per 100 000: 296.3
This beautiful country takes the eleventh place with just above two hundred ninety-six per a hundred thousand in an age-standardized study by the World Cancer Research Fund.
10. New Caledonia
Number of age standardized patients per 100 000: 297.9
If you’ve never heard of it, our tenth contender, New Caledonia, is a French colony located in the Pacific Ocean, just east of Australia. It takes its spot with just below three hundred per hundred thousand.
9. The Netherlands
Number of age standardized patients per 100 000: 304.8
The Netherlands, despite being a land of many freedoms and colors, takes the ninth place with close to three hundred and five per hundred thousand.
8. Republic of Korea
Number of age standardized patients per 100 000: 307.8
The Republic of Korea, also known as South Korea, is an emerging economic force which nowadays, like most of its neighboring countries is battling the extreme air pollution and accelerated urbanization that development brings.
7. Ireland
Number of age standardized patients per 100 000: 307.9
Ireland takes the seventh place in the list of the eleven countries with the highest cancer rates in the world with just below three hundred and ten per hundred thousand.
6. United States of America
Number of age standardized patients per 100 000: 318.0
The USA has been having a cancer problem for a while now. Attributed to the unhealthy lifestyle of the majority of the population, the health problems in the US don’t stop with cancer.
5. Norway
Number of age standardized patients per 100 000: 318.3
Norway has become a well-organized, rich nation which offers many improvements to the convenience of day-to-day life. However, most of them, such as fast food, lack of exercise and so on, are quite unhealthy.
4. Belgium
Number of age standardized patients per 100 000: 321.1
Just like Norway, Belgium’s population is enjoying an ever increasingly unhealthy, stationary life which certainly does not contribute to a healthier average for the country.
3. Australia
Number of age standardized patients per 100 000: 323.0
While being one of the countries with the highest life expectancy in the world, Australia also has the highest skin cancer rates globally too. Furthermore, smoking, which is related to lung cancer, is the leading cause of death.
2. France
Number of age standardized patients per 100 000: 324.6
France has some of the highest life expectancy rates in the European Union. However, taking the second spot in our unfortunate list, France also has some of the highest cancer rates. Even so, health care for cancer patients there is handled by the state.
1. Denmark
Number of age standardized patients per 100 000: 338.1
Denmark makes an unexpected leader in cancer rates, occupying the first spot on the list of the 11 countries with the highest cancer rates in the world with close to three hundred and forty per hundred thousand people.
