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Cancer Fact Sheet
Childhood Cancer Statistics.
- Cancer is the #1 cause of death by disease for children and adolescents, killing more children than asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and AIDS/HIV combined.
- Every day, in the United States 46 children-two classrooms of kids-are diagnosed with cancer.
- Each year over 12,000 kids are diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. alone and over 3000 will die from it.
- The incidence of childhood cancer in this country is rising almost 1% a year. During the past 20 years, the incidence of cancer among children has increased almost 20%.
- One in every 330 Americans will develop cancer before the age of 20.
- Childhood cancer spares no one, it hits Caucasian, African-American and Hispanic children of any socioeconomic background.
- The median age when adults get cancer is 67; the median age for children is 6.
Childhood cancer statistics were generated by SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results) of the National Cancer Institute. Incidence and survival data is collected from 11 population-based cancer registries and three supplemental registries covering 14% of the U.S. population. In, 1980 SEER began collecting data from Puerto Rico, Alaskan native populations, ten predominantly African-American counties in Georgia and four primarily Hispanic counties in the San Jose-Monterey area.
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