Epidemiology of breast cancer

[12] The United States has the highest annual incidence rates of breast cancer in the world; 128.6 per 100,000 in whites and 112.6 per 100,000 among African Americans.

[14][16] In the US, the age-adjusted incidence of breast cancer per 100,000 women rose from around 102 cases per year in the 1970s to around 141 in the late 1990s, and has since fallen, holding steady around 125 since 2003.

[27][29] Many reasons were found to be the source of this disparity, including the fact that breast cancer is diagnosed at later stages in Sub Saharan Africa.

[26] In addition to being diagnosed at later stages, breast cancer in Sub Saharan Africa was also found to have an earlier onset compared to western countries.

[27] Screening is considered an important tool to tackle the late stage diagnosis of breast cancer by most policy makers in African Countries, especially given that treatment is greatly limited by the lack of resources.

[26][30] More research is also required to produce more updated data on breast cancer and better understand the variances there and how they affect the burden of the disease in the region.

[27] This all factors into the different countries' difficulties to ensure that women at high risk are identified and that the disease is diagnosed early enough to have better chances of being treated.

[26][27] The lack of affordable and effective treatment methods also renders the efforts to promote early detection because those affected are then faced with inaccessible and unaffordable resources in the cases where they are available.

[26] The challenges to tackling breast cancer in Africa are varied, not fully understood, and further complicated by possible unique risk factors that could be highlighted by further studies,[27] but developing strategies that foster early detection are viewed in literature as a priority for effective fight against the disease.