Breast healthcare and cancer control in limited-resource countries: a framework for change

Breast cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related death among women around the globe. Each year, breast cancer is newly diagnosed in more than 1.1 million women, and these cases represent more than 10% of all new cancer cases. With more than 410,000 deaths each year, breast cancer accounts for over 1.6% of all female deaths worldwide. Breast cancer is already an urgent public health problem in high-resource regions, and is becoming an increasingly urgent problem in low-resource regions, where incidence rates have been increasing by up to 5% per year.3 Low-resource countries have generally not identified cancer as a priority healthcare issue because infectious disease is the predominant public health threat in such settings; however, resources are inevitably spent on cancer treatment when patients seek medical care for what is typically advanced-stage disease.