THURSDAY, April 9, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- Childhood cancer is the eighth leading cause of childhood death globally, with improvements in deaths due to childhood cancer seen in some countries since 1990, according to a study published online April 4 in The Lancet.
Lisa Force, M.D., from the University of Washington in Seattle, and the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2023 Childhood Cancer Collaborators analyzed results from the GBD 2023 to estimate the global burden of childhood cancers (ages 0 to 19 years).
The researchers found that in 2023, there were an estimated 377,000 incident childhood cancer cases, 144,000 deaths, and 11.7 million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to childhood cancer. From 1990, deaths due to childhood cancer decreased by 27.0 percent globally. However, over time, there was an increase in the World Health Organization (WHO) African region by 55.6 percent. There was an inverse correlation between age-adjusted years of life lost and country-level Sociodemographic Index in 2023. Among all cancers, childhood cancer was the eighth leading cause of childhood deaths and the ninth leading cause of DALYs in 2023. With the addition of the nine new cancer causes, the percentage of DALYs due to uncategorized childhood cancers was reduced from 26.5 percent in GBD 2017 to 10.5 percent. Nearly half (47.3 percent) of global childhood cancer deaths in 2023 were made up of target cancers for the WHO Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer.
"While outcomes for many childhood cancers have improved in high-income countries, these gains have not been equitably shared," Force said in a statement.
Two authors disclosed ties to the biopharmaceutical industry.