• M Saiful Huq, Sandhya C Acharya, Susmita Sharma, Saugat Poudyal, Simit Sapkota, Sunil Shrestha, Manish Gautam, Sudhir R Silwal, Mohammad M Haque, A F M Kamal Uddin, Sanjeeva Gunasekara, K Govind Babu, Ugyen Tshomo, Ahmad J Safi, Ahmed I Masood, Mostafa A Sumon, Mohammad A Hai, Altaf Hossain, Shaila Purvin, Heath Devin Skinner, Stephen Avery, Wilfred Ngwa, and Krishni Wijesooriya.
• Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Electronic address: huqs@upmc.edu.
• Lancet Oncol. 2024 Dec 1; 25 (12): e639e649e639-e649.

AbstractSouth Asian Association for Regional Collaboration (SAARC) countries, home to 24% of the world's population, are facing the double burden of disease (ie, where a population experiences both an increasing incidence of cancers typically associated with affluence and a sustained or rising burden of cancers linked to infections and poverty) with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) attributing to 47% of the global burden of disease and to about 60% of all deaths. In 2022, cancer in this region accounted for approximately 9·3% of incidence worldwide and 12% of global mortality. Cancer is one of the major NCDs affecting South Asia, accounting for a large proportion of disability-adjusted life-years lost in this region. The most common cancers are lung, head and neck, and gastrointestinal cancers in both sexes, and cervix and breast cancers in females. The cancer burden is high in SAARC countries, although there are differences among countries and within urban and rural regions of each country, depending on the level of available resources, development, and epidemiological shift. Here we discuss various cancer care issues and challenges throughout the cancer care continuum in the SAARC region. We make an urgent call for regional collaboration to develop, modify, and implement a holistic cancer control plan and formulate a systematic approach directed to address the growing burden of cancer in this region. It is crucial to establish strong political will and commitment to take forward the recommended actions outlined in this Series to overcome and address the cancer crisis in the SAARC region, aligning with Sustainable Development Goal 2030 targets.Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.

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