The agency's GLOBOCAN 2024 dataset, which covers 34 cancer types across 186 countries and territories, puts Vietnam's annual new cases at 177,404. It counts 404,153 people living with a diagnosis made within the previous five years.

Against roughly 100,000 new cases 16 years ago, incidence has risen 59% and deaths about 35%.

Deaths equal 63% of new diagnoses. That runs far above the 35-40% typical of the U.S., U.K. and Japan, where cancers are caught earlier, said Do Anh Tu, deputy director of K Hospital and chief of office of the Vietnam Cancer Society, at a July 31 conference on cancer prevention in Ho Chi Minh City. Many patients are diagnosed only after tumors have spread, he added.

Men accounted for 85,748 of the new cases but 63,167 of the deaths, a mortality-to-incidence ratio of 74%. Among women the figure was 52%.

Vietnamese men are diagnosed most often with lung, colorectal and liver cancer, while breast and thyroid cancer lead among women.

Breast cancer is now the most commonly diagnosed cancer in Vietnam overall, at 25,711 cases, ahead of lung cancer at 23,085. Lung cancer remains the leading killer, causing 21,340 deaths.

Vietnam has no complete national cancer registry, with data collected at a handful of large centers. The International Agency for Research on Cancer derives the country's mortality estimate by applying modeled ratios to its incidence figures rather than counting deaths directly.

Tu has called for a linked nationwide system, arguing that policy cannot be aimed accurately without one. Developed countries maintain full registries that let them detect shifts in the disease quickly.

For every 1,000 new cancer patients Vietnam has roughly 4.6 medical oncologists and 1.3 radiation oncologists, Tu said, with pathologists in shortest supply of all.

Inside a cancer treatment room at Hue Central Hospital in central Vietnam. Photo by VnExpress/Phung Tien

A lung cancer patient may spend close to VND170 million (US$6,500) on a year of treatment, and newer drugs are either absent from the insurance list or only partly reimbursed.

Some listed drugs are covered at only 50%, leaving patients to find VND30-60 million ($1,140-2,280) a month themselves, Nguyen Thi Thu Hang, deputy director of Ho Chi Minh City Social Insurance, told the conference. The city's insurance fund paid about VND4.86 trillion ($185 million) for cancer care across 1.19 million treatment visits last year.

Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Tri Thuc said cancer control has to run as a continuous chain from public communication and prevention through screening, treatment, nutrition and palliative care. Vietnam must stop waiting for patients to arrive at hospital already ill, he said.

"When on average a Vietnamese person dies of cancer roughly every five minutes, prevention and early detection are no longer a matter for the health sector alone," he said.

Politburo Resolution 72, issued in September 2025, commits the state to providing every citizen a free health check or screening at least once a year from 2026.

Thuc said Vietnam's specialized cancer treatment now approaches international standards but access remains uneven across regions.

About 40% of cancers are preventable through control of known risk factors, Tu said, citing tobacco, alcohol, obesity, physical inactivity and infection with HPV and the hepatitis B and C viruses.

He proposed building out screening in stages, beginning with cervical and breast cancer, where the evidence is strongest, then extending to colorectal and lung cancer.

Doctors say some cancers, including thyroid, breast, prostate and colon, carry five-year survival rates above 90% when caught early and treated promptly. Patients have remained stable for 10, 20 and 30 years after treatment.