IARC marks International Childhood Cancer Day 2025

To mark International Childhood Cancer Day 2025, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has published a series of videos about the Targeting Childhood Cancer through the Global Initiative for Cancer Registry Development (ChildGICR) project and the ChildGICR Masterclass. The series includes short interviews with the creators, trainers, and participants in the Masterclass courses.

Cancer types that occur in children are different from the cancer types that more commonly occur in adults. The most recent IARC estimate of the number of new cases of cancer occurring in children (ages 0–19 years) worldwide is about 275 000 per year. The most common cancer types in this age group are leukaemias, lymphomas, and central nervous system tumours, and the overall incidence has two separate peaks, at ages 0–4 years and 15–19 years.

Fully capturing the scale of the burden of childhood cancer is challenging, because in many countries childhood cancer is difficult to diagnose, and only about 15% of the world’s population of children are currently covered by population-based cancer registries.

To increase this coverage and gain a more complete picture of the burden of childhood cancer, IARC and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (USA) are leading the ChildGICR project. The overall aim of this project is to improve the quality and availability of data on cancer in children, particularly in countries with limited resources.

As part of the ChildGICR project, IARC and St. Jude developed the ChildGICR Masterclass on childhood cancer registration. An initial group of people were trained in the principles of childhood cancer registration. The members of this group then developed teaching materials and templates for future courses to be organized in their regions. Through this approach, more than 120 professionals have already been trained in the registration of childhood cancer, with support from IARC and St. Jude.

The resulting data from the improved registration capacity will contribute to the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer, which was launched in 2018 with support from IARC, St. Jude, and other global partners. The initiative has the goal of increasing the survival rate for childhood cancer globally to at least 60% by 2030. Currently, about 80% of children with cancer in high-income countries are successfully treated and survive. This percentage is much lower in many low-resource areas, where there is a dearth of information, diagnosis is imprecise, and treatment is inaccessible.

These data will also enable more targeted research on childhood cancer survivors. Some survivors of childhood cancer require lifelong medical follow-up, and some experience serious late effects, which include developing a new cancer.

Read more about the ChildGICR initiative

Read more about the ChildGICR educational programme

Read more about GICRNet

Read more about IARC’s work on childhood cancer

View the videos