1 in 4 deaths caused by cancer in the EU28

In the EU28 in 2011, cancer was the cause of death for 1.281 million persons, responsible for more than a quarter of all deaths (26.3%). Over the past ten years, while the total number of deaths slightly decreased (-0.5%), the number of deaths due to cancer increased by 6.3% (from 1.206 million in 2002 to 1.281 million in 2011), at a slightly higher pace for females (+6.6%) than for males (+6.0%). However, the number of deaths due to cancer remained higher in 2011 among the male population (718 000 deaths due to cancer) than among the female population (563 000). In 2011, cancer represented 37.1% of all causes of death for the EU28 population aged less than 65, while this level was only 23.8% for the older population (those aged 65 years and over).

Leading to the death of over 266 000 persons (or 20.8% of all deaths due to cancer), lung cancer was the main type of fatal cancer in the EU28 in 2011, followed by colorectal cancer (152 000 or 11.9%), breast cancer (93 000 or 7.2%), pancreas cancer (78 000 or 6.1%) and prostate cancer (73 000 or 10.2% of all fatal cancers for the male population only).
Among the total population, cancer was in 2011 the cause of more than 30% of deaths in the Netherlands (31.9%), Slovenia (31.3%) and Ireland (30.5%), while it represented less than a fifth of all causes of death in Bulgaria (15.6%), Romania (19.1%) and Lithuania (19.9%). At least a quarter of deaths were due to cancer in seventeen Member States in 2011.
Looking at age groups, 345 000 persons aged less than 65 died in 2011 in the EU28 because of cancer, meaning that cancers represented more than a third (37.1%) of all causes of death for this age group. Among Member States, death due to cancer for people aged less than 65 accounted for more than 40% of all causes of death in the Netherlands (48.0%), Italy (45.2%), Spain (43.9%) and Slovenia (40.9%), but less than 30% in Lithuania (23.2%), Latvia (24.2%), Estonia (26.3%), Bulgaria (26.7%) and Finland (28.4%). For the population aged 65 and over, cancer represented almost a quarter (23.8% or 936 000 persons) of all causes of deaths in the EU28 in 2011, with the highest shares registered in Slovenia (28.8%), Ireland (28.4%), the Netherlands (28.3%), Denmark (27.6%) and the United Kingdom (27.2%), and the lowest in Bulgaria (12.3%) and Romania (15.2%).