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Data

Number of people with cancer

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Global Health

About this data

Number of people with cancer
The estimated number of current cases of total cancers excluding non-melanoma skin cancer.
Source
IHME, Global Burden of Disease (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 20, 2024
Next expected update
May 2028
Date range
1990–2021
Unit
cases

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study provides a comprehensive assessment of global health trends. This dataset contains the prevalence and incidence counts and rates for 371 diseases and injuries.

Retrieved on
May 20, 2024
Retrieved from
https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-results/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
"Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network. Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 (GBD 2021). Seattle, United States: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), 2024. Available from https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-results/."

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Number of people with cancer”, part of the following publication: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser (2016) - “Global Health”. Data adapted from IHME, Global Burden of Disease. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-cancer [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

IHME, Global Burden of Disease (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

IHME, Global Burden of Disease (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Number of people with cancer” [dataset]. IHME, Global Burden of Disease, “Global Burden of Disease - Prevalence and Incidence” [original data]. Retrieved April 26, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-cancer