Cancer deaths: 8.2 million people in 2012

Cancer deaths were up 8 percent from 7.6 million in a previous survey in 2008 and breast cancer killed 522,000 women last year, up 14 percent in the same period, according to the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), CBS News reports.

"Breast cancer is also a leading cause of cancer death in the less developed countries of the world," said David Forman, head of IARC's Section of Cancer Information, the group that compiles the global cancer data.

An estimated 14.1 million people developed cancer in 2012, up from 12.7 million in 2008. And 1.7 million women were newly diagnosed with breast cancer last year, up by more than 20 percent from 2008.

IARC's report, called GLOBOCAN found that the most commonly diagnosed cancers worldwide in men and women combined were lung, breast and colorectal cancers. The most common causes of cancer death were lung, liver and stomach cancers.

While rates of new cancer cases are still highest in more developed regions, death rates are relatively much higher in less developed countries because people's tumors are often not detected and diagnosed early enough due to a lack of screening and access to treatment.

"An urgent need in cancer control today is to develop effective and affordable approaches to the early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of breast cancer among women living in less developed countries," said Christopher Wild, IARC's director.

One stark example of the inequality is in cervical cancer - which kills hundreds of thousands of women in Africa each year but can be largely avoided with a vaccine or successfully treated if it is picked up early enough with screening.

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