Freddie Bray

This is the number behind almost every statement about how much cancer there is. It shows the burden shifting towards low- and middle-income countries and towards older populations, which is why prevention, screening and affordable treatment in those settings decide the global trend. OnCo's country and prevalence pages draw on the same GLOBOCAN release.

This report marked the shift of the global cancer burden towards breast cancer and towards lower-income countries, and it is the baseline most 2020s policy documents cite. The GLOBOCAN 2022 release has since updated the totals.

This was the most cited description of the global cancer burden until the 2020 release and is the reference behind many national cancer plans of the late 2010s. Its country-level comparisons showed where prevention, such as HPV and hepatitis B vaccination and tobacco control, would have the largest effect.

One of the most cited descriptions of the global cancer burden of the 2010s, it framed the shift of cancer towards lower-income countries that later GLOBOCAN releases have confirmed.

For years the most cited paper in oncology, it fixed the picture of cancer as a growing problem of developing countries and is the baseline against which the 2012, 2018, 2020 and 2022 GLOBOCAN releases show the burden rising.

The first of the modern GLOBOCAN summaries in CA, it set the template that Jemal, Torre, Bray and Sung later followed and provides the 2002 baseline for tracking how the global burden has grown and shifted.