Cancer in Pakistan

One district counted by where people live: Lahore

New cancers found each year among people living in Lahore district, of every age. This is one district, not the country and not the province.

• 20205,284
• 2021not checked yet
• 20226,661
• 20236,271
• 20246,986
• 20259,017

The publisher marks every one of these reports “preliminary”. It is paid for by a cancer charity and is not a government body. A higher number is not always more cancer: the reports do not say why it rose, and the centres sending in records went from 28 in 2024 to 30 in 2025.

Source: Punjab Cancer Registry, sponsored by the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust, Punjab Cancer Registry Report, the reports for 2020 and 2022 to 2025, page 1 of each.

Each bar is the patients newly seen in one year at 17 of the atomic energy commission's 20 cancer hospitals, wherever they live. About 4 in every 100 came from Afghanistan. It is not everyone with cancer in Pakistan: people treated at charity and private hospitals are not in it.

Why there is no count for the country. Doctors in Pakistan do not have to report cancer. In a government research body's words:

“cancer is not a notifiable disease in Pakistan”

That body once pooled 269,707 records from six sets of cancer records for the five years 2015 to 2019 together. It says the same patient may be in it more than once, and that not every set covered all five years, so it is not a count of people.

Fewer patients came in 2020 (33,512). The commission's report gives the reason: in the pandemic, patients were

“isolated and restricted to homes”

The commission prints 2015 to 2017 as one figure for three years (102,022), so those years are not drawn.

• 201838,457
• 201940,797
• 202033,512
• 202139,358

Sources: Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Pakistan Atomic Energy Cancer Registry (PAECR) Vol-III 2020-21, pages 9, 11 and 79 of the file. Health Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Pakistan, Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan, National Cancer Registry of Pakistan: First Comprehensive Report of Cancer Statistics 2015-2019, 2023.

Of 22,657 women and 16,701 men seen at 17 state cancer hospitals in 2021, the five commonest cancers for each. These are shares of patients at those hospitals. They are not anyone's chance of getting cancer.

Two other sets of records agree with the hospitals. Among the 269,707 records pooled for 2015 to 2019, mouth cancer led in men (11.6 in every 100) and breast cancer in women (38.8 in every 100). In Lahore district in 2025, breast cancer was 2,119 of 4,878 cancers in adult women, and cancer of the lip and mouth 376 of 3,513 in adult men (preliminary).

The commission's own names for these are oral cavity (mouth), colorectum (colon and rectum) and CNS (brain and nerves).

Sources: Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Pakistan Atomic Energy Cancer Registry (PAECR) Vol-III 2020-21, page 45 of the file. Health Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Pakistan, Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan, National Cancer Registry of Pakistan: First Comprehensive Report of Cancer Statistics 2015-2019, 2023. Punjab Cancer Registry, sponsored by the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust, Punjab Cancer Registry Report, the report for 2025, page 2.

Sources: Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Pakistan Atomic Energy Cancer Registry (PAECR) Vol-III 2020-21, page 91 of the file. Health Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Pakistan, Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan, National Cancer Registry of Pakistan: First Comprehensive Report of Cancer Statistics 2015-2019, 2023.

Most common cancers at each age

The three commonest kinds among patients of each age in 2021, as shares of the patients of that age.

• 0 to 9Brain and nerves 23.7, eye 12.2, kidney 12.0 in every 100
• 10 to 19Bone 14.7, brain and nerves 13.1, Hodgkin lymphoma 11.5 in every 100
• 20 to 39Breast, mouth, colon and rectum, in that order; no shares are printed
• 40 to 59Breast 31.3, mouth 11.5, colon and rectum 4.9 in every 100
• 60 and overBreast 18.3, mouth 8.9, prostate 7.1 in every 100

All 39,358 patients seen at 17 state cancer hospitals in 2021, by age. The age groups are the commission's; it prints the last as over 60.

These are patients at those hospitals, so the picture shows who came for care there, not how common cancer is at each age.

Source: Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Pakistan Atomic Energy Cancer Registry (PAECR) Vol-III 2020-21, pages 46 and 47 of the file.

In every 100 patients, 2020

• Stage I, the earliest6
• Stage II19
• Stage III32
• Stage IV, the latest32
• Undefined4
• Unknown, unstaged or unspecified5

Breast cancer by stage

Patients with breast cancer, women and men together, by the stage at which it was found.

2021: stage I 368, stage II 2,508, stage III 4,045, stage IV 2,127, with no stage 696; 9,744 in all.

2020: stage I 304, stage II 2,172, stage III 3,373, stage IV 1,582, with no stage 413; 7,844 in all.

A stage says how far a cancer has grown or spread when it is found. Stage I is the earliest and stage IV the latest.

In every 100 patients at 17 state cancer hospitals. The commission prints whole numbers, so a year adds up to 98 or 99. “Undefined” and “unknown” are its own two groups, kept apart here as it prints them.

Source: Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Pakistan Atomic Energy Cancer Registry (PAECR) Vol-III 2020-21, Figure 6, pages 84, 37 and 69 of the file.

Which cancers

The five commonest kinds among the 625 children recorded in 2025.

• Glioma, a brain tumour107
• Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a blood cancer83
• Hodgkin's lymphoma63
• Non-Hodgkin lymphoma49
• Osteosarcoma, a bone cancer40

• 2020 aged 18 or under510
• 2021not checked yet
• 2022 aged under 18505
• 2023 the report gives no age468
• 2024 aged 18 or under554
• 2025 aged 18 or under625

Children living in Lahore district who were newly found to have cancer in each year. There is no count of childhood cancer for the whole country.

The publisher marks every report “preliminary”. It is paid for by a cancer charity and is not a government body.

The report for 2022 says “under 18 years” and the report for 2023 gives no age, so the years are not strictly one series. Dooram has read the report for 2021 once only, and shows no figure until it has been read again.

At the state cancer hospitals, which serve the whole country, 522 patients were aged 0 to 9 and 1,235 were aged 10 to 19 in 2021.

Sources: Punjab Cancer Registry, sponsored by the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust, Punjab Cancer Registry Report, the reports for 2020 and 2022 to 2025, pages 1 and 2. Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Pakistan Atomic Energy Cancer Registry (PAECR) Vol-III 2020-21, page 46 of the file.

Source: Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Pakistan Demographic Survey 2020, Table 4.7, pages 28 and 17 of the file.

The 20 hospitals

The town, the hospital's short name as the commission prints it, and the year it opened.

• KarachiAEMC1960
• LahoreCENUM1963
• JamshoroNIMRA1965
• MultanMINAR1968
• PeshawarIRNUM1975
• LarkanaLINAR1978
• IslamabadNORI1983
• LahoreINMOL1984
• QuettaCENAR1987
• FaisalabadPINUM1996
• BahawalpurBINO1999
• KarachiKIRAN2001
• AbbottabadINOR2004
• GujranwalaGINUM2010
• SwatSINOR2012
• BannuBINOR2012
• Dera Ismail KhanDINAR2012
• NawabshahNORIN2012
• GilgitGINOR2022
• NarowalDCN2023

Sources: Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Pakistan Atomic Energy Cancer Registry (PAECR) Vol-III 2020-21, pages 4 to 8 and 93 of the file. Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Atomic Energy Cancer Hospitals, the commission's page and its picture of the hospitals, read 11 October 2026.

Worldwide figures

Girls given the HPV vaccine: 40 in every 100 (reported, World Health Organization and UNICEF, 2025).

Women aged 30 to 49 ever screened for cervical cancer: 1 in every 100 (estimated, World Health Organization, 2019).

The HPV vaccine protects against the virus that causes most cancer of the cervix.

This is an announcement: the directorate said girls “will be vaccinated” in schools, madrassas and health facilities. Dooram has read no figure for how many were, and the worldwide figure is not a count of this campaign.

Dooram looked for a national screening programme on the health ministry's and the directorate's pages and found none.

Sources: Federal Directorate of Immunization, Pakistan, HPV Vaccination Campaign, 15 to 27 September 2025, read 11 October 2026. World Health Organization and UNICEF, Girls given the HPV vaccine, 2025, read 10 October 2026. World Health Organization, Global Health Observatory, Women aged 30 to 49 screened for cervical cancer, 2019, read 10 October 2026.

The list names the medicines a health system needs most. Being on the list does not mean a hospital has it, or that it is paid for.

Dooram has not yet read which cancer medicines are on the list, so it names none.

Who pays, in one province: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's health insurance says it covers “all type of cancers”, for care in hospital, up to 1 million rupees for a family in a year.

Sources: Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination, Pakistan, Notification F.No.8-43/2021-DD(PS), 20 October 2025, page 1 of the file. Sehat Sahulat Program, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sehat Sahulat Program, the programme's own page, read 11 October 2026.

Source: Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan, Clinical Trial Registry of Pakistan, read 11 October 2026.

Alive five years after breast cancer, in every 100 women

• Pakistan59
• Sri Lanka77
• Kenya43
• Brazil90
• Germany88

Women aged 30 to 49 ever screened for cervical cancer, in every 100

• Pakistan1
• Sri Lanka27
• Kenya17
• Brazil58
• Germany93

Girls given the HPV vaccine, in every 100

• Pakistan40
• Sri Lanka96
• Kenya69
• Brazil86
• Germany68

Sources: World Health Organization, Global Health Observatory, Five-year survival after breast cancer, women diagnosed 2017 to 2021, read 10 October 2026. World Health Organization, Global Health Observatory, Women aged 30 to 49 screened for cervical cancer, 2019, read 10 October 2026. World Health Organization and UNICEF, Girls given the HPV vaccine, 2025, read 10 October 2026.