Cancer is a word we have all learned to fear, but unfortunately, the 15 countries with the highest cancer rates in the world in 2020 come across the condition at a much higher scale than the rest of the world.
In 2015 alone, 8.8 million people in the world gave their lives to cancer, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). 70% of these deaths occurred in low and middle-income nations, the less developed ones to be precise. While that is expected since patients in poor countries do not have access to cancer treatments as readily as patients in developed countries do, incidents of cancer are actually more common in more advanced countries. The thing to understand is that cancer rates by country and cancer death rates by country are completely different matters, and will yield entirely distinct results. The former phrase will provide you with a list of mostly European well-settled countries while the latter will present mostly African poverty-stricken states.
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But the question is: why is that so? Why does Denmark have the highest cancer rate and why does Niger have the lowest cancer rate? ScienceDaily says that it all boils down to genetics and natural selection. To sum up the research simply, advanced methods of treatment have enabled several cancer-afflicted patients to go into complete remission and lead normal healthy lives. This, in turn, means that their genes will be passed on to future generations, causing the probability of their descendants contracting cancer to increase tenfold. In underdeveloped countries, on the other hand, natural selection is still at play. A dangerous disease will in most likely cause death, meaning the deceased will not be able to reproduce.
Now that you know what to expect from this list let’s get on to the actual topic. To compile countries with the highest cancer rates, we referred to the World Cancer Research Fund, where cancer frequency of each country has been enumerated. The data here is from the year 2012, and unfortunately, no further research has been conducted on the topic. Any other articles on this subject have also been formulated using the statistics from the same source. However, the list is not likely to change much because of the theory of “better” countries getting more cancer. If you were to research on the other end of the spectrum, i.e., find out what country has the lowest cancer rate or get a list of lowest cancer rates by state (which you can do through our piece on countries with the lowest cancer rates in the world in 2020), you will see that the theory is actually quite substantial.
Now without further ado, let’s begin our list of countries with the highest cancer rates in the world in 2020:
15. Germany
Cancer rate per 100,000: 313.1
One microcensus shows about one in four people older than 15 smoke in Germany. Smoking laws change from state to state, though one federal smoking law bans smoking in federal buildings, passenger stations of public railways and public transportation.
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