The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is marking Childhood Cancer Awareness Month 2023 with a series of posts highlighting some of the different research projects IARC is undertaking with the goals of better understanding how cancer develops in children and improving the measurement of the global burden of childhood cancer.
These posts will focus on research examining the effect of diets of mothers and children on a child’s risk of developing cancer, the financial difficulties experienced by families of children with cancer, and how the increasing numbers of survivors of childhood cancer need to be estimated to enable health-care systems to meet service requirements.
Worldwide, an estimated 400 000 children and adolescents (aged 0–19 years) are diagnosed with cancer per year. Leukaemia, brain cancers, and lymphomas are the most common types overall. Young children also develop tumours specific to their young age, such as neuroblastoma, retinoblastoma, or kidney tumours. Currently, it is difficult to prevent childhood cancer because the causes are not yet well understood. Improving diagnostic capacity and accuracy, as well as access to high-quality care, can help to reduce the number of deaths due to childhood cancer. The WHO Classification of Tumours volume on childhood cancers, published in July 2023, is one example of the important contribution of IARC and its collaborators to standardized international research on these rare diseases.
To learn more about IARC’s research targeting childhood cancer, visit the IARC website regularly during September, or subscribe to the IARC social media channels to view all the updates marking Childhood Cancer Awareness Month 2023.
VideosVideos
IARC videos related to childhood cancer
Researching the origins of childhood cancer
This video is available in 11 different languages
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Publication of the WHO Classification of Tumours, 5th Edition, Volume 7: Paediatric Tumours
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