Australia’s cancer care system will need to adapt to a future in which millions of people live for years with or beyond cancer, with the number of Australians affected projected to climb almost 60% by 2050. By 2050, more than one million Australians aged 80 and over will account for almost 40% of all cancer survivors.
Cancer Prevalence Projections
The first long-term projections of cancer prevalence in Australia estimate that 2.62 million people will be living with a previous cancer diagnosis in 2050, up from 1.67 million. Study co-author Professor Michael Jefford said the headline figure concealed an important challenge for the health system – many of those people would still have active, incurable disease.
They estimated that while 1.47 million people with a history of cancer may potentially be cured by 2050, around 1.15 million – or 44% – would be living with incurable cancer and potentially requiring ongoing treatment. That treatment will require an appropriate workforce.
Workforce Challenges
Professor Jefford told reporters that the data revealed many survivors may be living with treatable but not curable cancers, such as metastatic melanoma or advanced lung cancer, and would require ongoing longer-term treatment. He said the projections helped expose the scale of the population likely to be living long term with treatable but incurable cancers.
Instead of having to treat people for a month or two, if they’re on treatment for four, five, or ten years, that clearly has huge impacts because they’re still going to the hospital and having treatment, but they’re also going to their GP, Professor Jefford said. The study, published in The Lancet Regional Health Western Pacific, examined 24 cancer types and all cancers combined over the previous 30 years following an initial diagnosis.
Breast cancer was projected to be Australia’s most prevalent cancer in 2050, with an estimated 485,135 cases, followed by prostate cancer with 468,991 cases – both expected to increase by more than 50% from 2025. Melanoma was next, forecast to reach 331,909 cases – a 32.8% increase from 2025 – while colorectal cases were estimated to rise 36.2% to 237,053.
Population Growth and Cancer Rates
Australia’s population, roughly 27 million according to the ABS, is forecast to grow to between 32.5 and 38 million by 2050, depending on immigration, fertility rates, and life expectancy. This population growth was expected to drive the increase. Testicular, thyroid, prostate, breast, and melanoma were predicted to have the highest proportions of people living beyond cancer – potentially cured – by 2050.
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More male than female survivors were projected, which researchers attributed to consistently higher cancer rates in men than women. The study estimated most people living with or beyond cancer in 2050 would be long-term survivors, with 69.8% diagnosed at least five years earlier.
Lead author Associate Professor Qingwei Luo said the analysis highlighted the challenge not only of treating people with cancer but of ensuring a growing, increasingly diverse population could live well for years after diagnosis. This fundamentally changes what cancer care needs to deliver, because a history of a past cancer diagnosis and treatment will increasingly become part of everyday health records management.
While people aged 70 to 79 years were estimated to constitute the largest proportion across all prevalence durations in 2025, this was projected to shift to those aged 80 and over by 2050.
Healthcare System Implications
Researchers expect this cohort to more than double, from over 481,000 in 2025 to more than one million by 2050. The increase in middle and older-aged groups living with cancer would have critical implications for the healthcare system, as around one in five Australians aged 65 and over had a severe or profound comorbid illnesses.
Common coexisting conditions, such as coronary artery disease, dementia, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, would drive rising multimorbidity, requiring better-coordinated care across the health system, the researchers said. Approximately one-third of cancers relate to modifiable risk factors, reinforcing the importance of addressing major lifestyle changes and health promotion, not just early detection.
Prevention was not just an individual responsibility but a shared role among governments, health services, employers, and communities to create environments that support healthy choices. Primary care practitioners can advise patients on smoking cessation, maintaining a healthy body weight and dietary patterns, being physically active, protecting against excessive sun exposure, and limiting alcohol consumption.
Alongside primary prevention, Professor Luo said population screening remained one of the most powerful tools to reduce future cancer burden, reaffirming the need to boost screening participation through risk-stratified approaches that ensure higher-risk individuals receive more tailored care. Screening can enable cancers to be detected at an earlier stage, when treatment is often more effective, less intensive, and associated with better outcomes.
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In addition, they need to invest in the cancer workforce. The ongoing need for long-term monitoring in a people-intensive service would likely require greater investment in rehabilitation, supportive care, mental health services, and integrated specialist-primary care models, which may help reduce potentially preventable hospital use.
Another key pressure point is coordinating care for people living with cancer alongside other chronic conditions, Professor Luo said. While demand for oncology services would rise, she said practitioners could expect growing demand for follow-up and survivorship care, likely requiring longer, more complex consultations.
Careful workforce planning would be needed to address the significant pressure on the oncology workforce, Professor Luo said. The decisions they make today will determine whether the growing number of cancer survivors becomes a strain on the health system or one of the great public health success stories of the coming decades.
Professor Jefford acknowledged that blanket treatment would be inappropriate, but there was evidence that GP-led follow-up was at least as effective as oncologist-led care, particularly in coordinating and managing the whole person. He said this was especially important for supporting patients who had finished treatment but were experiencing pain, fatigue, psychological stress, difficulty reintegrating into their daily routine, or loss of income.
A lot of survivorship care, including health promotion, ensuring people continue to have screening for other health conditions and cancers, and addressing health risk factors such as smoking, exercise, and diet, is absolutely what GPs do, Professor Jefford said. However, he said this was conditional on ensuring GPs received the right information and support, and on working closely with oncology providers and geriatricians, particularly to address the substantial increase in older cancer survivors.
The whole-of-population study also did not account for disparities across population subgroups, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, rural populations, and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. Further research is vital to estimate future disparities in cancer prevalence and develop dedicated benchmarks for different priority populations, thereby supporting long-term health care planning, the researchers said.
It is essential to consider the impact of cancer on individuals and their families, as well as the broader community.
