Giving Compass' Take:

• Hannah Ritchie breaks down the global cancer death rate based on data from 2016, which shows cancer was the second leading cause of death in the world. 

• How can funders use this data to inform cancer research and treatment programs? 

• Learn how to make an impact on cancer research. 

Every sixth death in the world is due to cancer, making it the second leading cause of death (second only to cardiovascular diseases). In 2016, 8.9 million people are estimated to have died from the various forms of cancer. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) put relatively small error margins around this global figure: the lower and upper estimates extend from 8.75 to 9.1 million.

Progress against many other causes of deaths and demographic drivers of increasing population size, life expectancy and — particularly in higher-income countries — aging populations mean that the total number of cancer deaths continues to increase.

Overall, we see that the majority of cancer deaths occur in those over 50 years old; 44 percent of cancer deaths in people aged 70+ years old, closely followed by 43 percent aged between 50 and 69. The distribution of deaths across the age spectrum has changed notably since 1990; the share of deaths which occur in those aged over 70 has increased by 7 percent, whilst the share in those aged 50-69 and 15-49 has fallen by approximately 3-4 percent each.

Collectively, children and adolescents under 14 years old account for less than one percent of cancer deaths — although still tragically, this equates to around 80,000 children per year.

Read the full article on cancer deaths by Hannah Ritchie at Our World in Data.