According to the latest World Health Organization data (2022), the incidence of breast cancer is higher in France than anywhere else in the world. We're on the top step of a dismal podium. In a country so interested in rankings and medals, it's surprising that this information didn't get more coverage on World Cancer Day, February 4, when the focus was on new treatments, screening, the coming miracles of artificial intelligence and a variety of other things that generally skirt around the only really important question: why?
Why – even after correcting for the effects of age – does a French woman have a higher risk of breast cancer than any other woman on the planet?
There is one optimistic answer: The French healthcare system is very efficient, and this disease is perhaps better detected than elsewhere. This is probably the case, but it doesn't fully answer the question. In France, breast cancer mortality is still higher than in most comparable Western European countries. It is some 10% higher than in Belgium, Austria or Portugal; some 30% higher than in Switzerland, the United States or Sweden; and some 50% higher than in Spain or Norway, for example.
'Why me? Why us?'
In France and elsewhere, the incidence of this cancer is rising almost continuously, particularly among young people. Between 1990 and 2023, the number of cases more than doubled in the country, from 29,934 to 61,214. Less than half of this increase is due to population aging or growth, according to Santé Publique France (France's public health agency). The "real" risk of contracting this pathology has increased by more than 50% in three decades.
Are individual risk factors (alcohol, sedentary lifestyle, excess weight, hormone treatments and, to a lesser extent, genetic predisposition and smoking) predominant? No – according to the French National Cancer Institute, only a third of new cases of breast cancer (at 2018 levels) can be attributed to these proven risk factors.
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