Ethiopia’s national cancer figures come from a small set of sources that anyone can consult directly: IARC’s Global Cancer Observatory for the burden estimates, WHO’s Global Health Observatory for programme, workforce, capacity and financing indicators, and WHO AFRO for programme reporting. This page sets out what our research units measure, how those sources produce their numbers and how to read them, where two credible records differ, and what the Ethiopian Organization for Cancer Prevention and Research (CPR – Ethiopia) can supply.
What the research units measure
Behavioural Research (BRET) covers the prevention and reduction of behaviours that raise cancer risk and the determinants of participation in evidence-based screening, spanning basic behavioural and psychological science, interventions in tobacco use and in diet and energy balance, communication and informatics, and surveillance of the public’s use of cancer information.
Cancer Health Services Research (CHSR) covers value-based cancer services across the care continuum using real-world outcomes and cost data, including patient outcomes, patients’ experience of services and the economic burden of cancer. Patient-reported outcomes, service experience and household costs are collected directly from patients rather than assembled from routine systems, which is what makes them measurable in Ethiopia without national registration behind them.
Tobacco Control Research (TCR) covers surveillance of tobacco knowledge, attitudes and behaviour, the aetiology, predictors and determinants of tobacco use, nicotine dependence and cessation, and includes the CEASE project on compliance with and enforcement of anti-smoking policy.
The burden estimates and how they are produced
Ethiopia’s 2024 estimate was 79,239 new cancer cases and 46,841 deaths (opens in a new tab) in a population of 132,059,772, with 142,431 people within five years of a diagnosis. Incidence derives from a subnational registry, with those rates applied to the 2024 national population; mortality derives from applying model-based mortality-to-incidence ratios to the national incidence estimates. GLOBOCAN grades the incidence method 2b and the mortality method 3c, among its weaker tiers.
Two things follow for anyone using these numbers. Any pattern specific to the area the registry covers is carried into the national figure. And mortality is derived from incidence rather than counted, so the two are not independent measurements: a revision to one moves the other.
Successive GLOBOCAN rounds use different methods and denominators, and we use the 2024 round throughout. Check which round a figure comes from before comparing: WHO AFRO was citing the 2020 Ethiopian cervical cancer estimates of 7,445 cases and 5,338 deaths in its campaign launch release of November 2025, against the 2024 estimates of 8,159 and 5,007 (IARC, GLOBOCAN 2024).
Where sources disagree
The registry. Ethiopia reported to WHO in 2021 that a population-based cancer registry exists (opens in a new tab) (Global Health Observatory, indicator NCD_CCS_PBCR, single record, 2021, “Yes”), and the equivalent 2019 indicator also records “Yes”. An Ethiopian registry appears in neither IARC’s Cancer Incidence in Five Continents, which covers 844 registry-populations, nor Cancer Over Time. The Addis Ababa registry’s data reaches the published record through IARC’s SURVCAN-3, delivered inside a web application. Both positions stand, and both are stated here.
HPV coverage. WHO’s estimate of Ethiopian HPV coverage among the 9–14 target cohort was 51% for 2025 (indicator SDGHPVRECEIVED), having stood at 49% in 2020 and peaked at 60% in 2022 and 2023. Ethiopia’s own administrative reporting to WHO recorded first-dose coverage of 96% for the same year, and female coverage between 90% and 94% for 2019 to 2023. Both series sit within WHO systems. Part of the difference is a denominator question rather than a delivery one: Ethiopia’s administrative target for 2025 was 1,307,204 girls against WHO’s denominator of 1,612,309, a difference of roughly 305,000. The denominator accounts for part of that gap, not all of it.
Working with the national record
Each source has a shape worth knowing before the numbers are used.
IARC’s Global Cancer Observatory carries the burden estimates described above: national, for 2024, modelled.
WHO’s Global Health Observatory carries the programme, workforce, capacity and financing indicators, each with its own reference year and its own indicator code — NCD_CCS_PBCR for the registry item, SDGHPVRECEIVED for HPV coverage. Quote the code alongside the value and the year, and the number stays recoverable when the URL changes. A set of these indicators is assembled on the Ethiopia cancer control dashboard, which states for each figure whether it is drawn live from the Global Health Observatory or taken from published evidence.
WHO’s site-specific cancer mortality series for Ethiopia runs to 2004.
One national figure exists on stage at diagnosis: WHO AFRO recorded in November 2025 that more than 80% of Ethiopian cervical cancers are found at an advanced stage. It describes cases that reached a facility, so read it as a case series rather than a population estimate.
Ethiopia’s 2024 national adult tobacco survey was fielded and presented at a forum in Addis Ababa in April 2025, and five prevalence figures from it are available through WHO. Deposited NCD survey microdata is catalogued in the WHO NCD Microdata Repository (opens in a new tab), which is global and unfiltered, so search it by country.
Reuse and attribution
WHO Global Health Observatory data is published under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO — non-commercial and share-alike, a condition that can propagate to derived visualisations. IARC’s Global Cancer Observatory requires citation on every panel or figure using it. The ICO/IARC HPV Information Centre’s terms require permission before systematic retrieval, so its Ethiopia report is cited rather than ingested.
Working with CPR – Ethiopia
CPR – Ethiopia is a research organisation, and the measurement programme set out at the top of this page is the work it holds. What it responds to is set out on the contact page.
Proposals for joint work go to the collaborate page or to cancer.prev.ethio@gmail.com. Corrections to any figure we publish reach the same address; naming the page and the source you are reading it against is enough.