The Commission has highlighted that, despite significant improvements in research, treatment, and survival, gross inequities persist related to physical symptoms, emotional despair, and financial burdens.

“I would like see this report being used to improve outcomes globally for people with breast cancer and driving up the standard of care across the world,” said Professor McIntosh, who is a Consultant Breast Surgeon, clinical trialist and Professor of Surgical Oncology at PGJCCR.

Breast cancer is now the world’s most common form of cancer with 7.8 million women alive having been diagnosed in the previous five years, according to figures from the end of 2020. In the same year, 685,000 women died from the disease.

“We have actually set some measurable outcomes in our section of the report,” Professor McIntosh explained. “These are around globally equitable access to diagnostics including access to validated and novel biomarkers for treatment planning, around access to multidisciplinary expertise to allow patients to receive the optimal treatment for them, around global equitable access to a full range of treatment modalities, and around ensuring that clinical trials are diverse, inclusive and are representative of the global breast cancer community.”

The Commission’s report also looks at patient empowerment, decision-making and digital health but warns that the scale of breast cancer-related suffering and other costs are not well-measured.  “Society and policymakers currently see only the tip of an iceberg,” the Commission authors say.

The Commission’s lead author, Professor Charlotte Coles, Department of Oncology, University of Cambridge, UK, says: “Recent improvements in breast cancer survival represent a great success of modern medicine. However, we can’t ignore how many patients are being systematically left behind. Our Commission builds on previous evidence, presents new data, and integrates patient voices to shed light on a large unseen burden. We hope that, by highlighting these inequities and hidden costs and suffering in breast cancer, they can be better recognised and addressed by health care professionals and policymakers in partnership with patients and the public around the world.”

Professor McIntosh said that he would like to see the report being used to underscore the importance of good access to locoregional therapies (surgery and radiotherapy): “I think currently these are undervalued and a great deal of emphasis is placed on systemic therapies which are very expensive, and difficult to access for large swathes of the world, especially low and middle income countries.”

The Commission is launched at a meeting on 16th April in St John’s College, Cambridge together with a simultaneous publication in the Lancet.