Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in middle-aged adults worldwide. However, cancer isn't far behind, especially in wealthy countries.
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In fact, according to two new surveys published on September 3rd in the British scientific journal The Lancet, it is becoming the main cause of death in high-income countries. Indeed, "cancer is likely to become the world's leading cause of death" in a few decades, according to the researchers.
From 2005 to 2016, the authors of these surveys studied a sample of 160,000 adults in 21 high, middle and low-income countries. In 2017, heart disease accounted for more than 40% of deaths, or about 17.7 million people, while cancer caused just over a quarter (26%) of all deaths. But in wealthy countries, the results are alarming: cancer now kills 2.5 times more people than heart disease.
In low-income countries, cardiovascular disease remains the number one killer, killing three times more people than cancer does. Yet people in low-income countries are less at risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
How do you explain this paradox? Access to - and the quality of - the healthcare provided to these populations simply aren't as good as in rich countries.
