Thread by @shrikanth_krish

Global cancer incidence map

# cases per 100K pop:

Denmark: 326.1
Australia: 314.1
US: 300.2
France: 300.4
UK: 266.9
South Africa: 202
China: 181
Nepal: 141.6
India: 98.5
Saudi Arabia: 87.6

globalcancermap.com

These rates are age-adjusted, to account for the difference in life expectancies across countries. If they were not age-adjusted the cancer rates would be even lower in a relative sense in a country like India vis-a-vis US

What's interesting however is that not all cancers are quite the same.

Though overall cancer rates are very low in India, it has one of the highest rates of cervical cancer in the world.

Cervical cancer rates per 100K women
India: 27
China: 9.6
UK: 7.2
US: 5.7
Australia: 4.9

India also has moderately high breast cancer rates - by no means extremely low.

Breast cancer rates per 100K women
Australia: 84.8
Canada: 83.2
US: 76
India: 22.9
China:21.6
Iran: 18.4
Tanzania: 10.1

However when it comes to the cancers most readily linked to lifestyle choices - "Lung" and "Liver", India has extremely low rates!

Lung cancer per 100K
US: 42.1
Poland: 40.9
China: 33.5
UK: 31.3
India: 6.6
Saudi : 5.2

Liver cancer per 100K

Mongolia: 94.4
China: 25.7
Japan: 11.2
US: 4.5
Australia: 3.5
UK: 3
India: 2.2

What's striking is the very high rates of liver cancer in East Asia, while the rates are extremely low surprisingly in the West. Almost as low as India!

Given the much lower medical expenditure, one would expect cancer mortality rates to be much higher in the developing world as compared to the West. But that's not quite the case.

Sure, mortality given incidence is higher in poorer countries, but not high enough to make the overall mortality rate (measured as % of pop) higher.

Here are the mortality rates (for all cancers) (out of 100K)

China: 124.6
UK: 115.8
US: 104.1
Aus: 102.8
India: 68
Saudi: 63.1

So it appears prevention still trumps cure when it comes to Cancer. The US does lose more people to the disease per 100K population than India notwithstanding the enormous medical expenditure.

Here's a sense of the enormous difference in per-capita health expenditure across countries -

US: $7,720
Canada: $4,623
UK: $3801
China: $157
India: $43!!

So the US spends over 150 times as much per-capita on healthcare than India (let's say that multiple in something like 60 in PPP terms).

Yet has a higher cancer mortality rate. And a life expectancy of 78 years relative to India's 64.

Is that enough bang for the buck?

Societies need to figure out what is the optimal per-capita health expenditure that gives the best return on expenditure. I don't think either US or India are anywhere close to the optimal point.

But I guess India is closer.