World Refugee Day: Cancer Care for Refugees Is a Global Health Crisis
A 2025 systematic review of 561,850 refugees reveals substantial cancer burden variation and barriers to care. Advanced-stage diagnosis is common, and UNHCR funding gaps in Jordan highlight resource limits.
On World Refugee Day, the global community recognizes people forced to flee conflict, persecution, and disaster. Among them are patients whose cancer diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up are disrupted by displacement. Cancer is an important but often under-recognized challenge in refugee health.
A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis brought together evidence from 29 studies involving 561,850 refugees across 12 host countries. The findings show substantial variation in cancer burden, major gaps in data, and persistent barriers to prevention, early diagnosis, treatment, and continuity of care. Across the studies included, cancer prevalence ranged from 0.5% to 13.3%, reflecting major differences in population characteristics, host-country health systems, study methods, and access to diagnosis.
Breast cancer was the most frequently reported cancer type, accounting for 25.4% of cases. Leukaemia represented 16.9%, central nervous system cancers 7.0%, and lung cancer 4.8%. These figures do not define a universal cancer profile for all refugee communities, but they underline the need for cancer services that address both common adult malignancies and paediatric cancers.
One of the most concerning findings in the literature is the frequency of advanced-stage presentation. In studies of Syrian refugees in Turkey, between 68% and 76.4% of patients were diagnosed with stage III or IV disease. This is not a pooled global estimate, but it illustrates how displacement can delay diagnosis and limit access to timely treatment. Late-stage presentation may result from multiple overlapping barriers: limited cancer awareness, language differences, transportation difficulties, financial hardship, lack of documentation, fragmented referral pathways, and competing priorities such as housing, food security, and safety.
Earlier diagnosis is not achievable through screening alone. However, accessible primary care, symptom awareness, appropriate referral systems, vaccination programmes, and context-specific early detection strategies can help reduce avoidable delays. Cancer care is costly, complex, and time-sensitive. It requires access to pathology, imaging, surgery, systemic treatment, radiotherapy, supportive care, and follow-up. In humanitarian settings, these services are often fragmented or unavailable.
Data from UNHCR Exceptional Care Committees in Jordan demonstrate the difficult decisions that can arise when funding is limited. Between 2010 and 2012, 511 applications for cancer treatment were reviewed, but only 246 were approved. The main reason for denial was poor prognosis, reflecting a setting in which limited resources had to be allocated among patients with high-cost needs. A later analysis of Jordan showed that, between 2016 and 2017, only 40% of 289 cancer-treatment applications reviewed by the UNHCR Exceptional Care Committee were approved and funded. These figures should be understood as historical, setting-specific data from Jordan.
Humanitarian responses have historically focused on acute infection, malnutrition, injury, and maternal-child health. Yet many displaced people now live for years in host communities and require sustained care for noncommunicable diseases, including cancer. For people living with cancer, becoming a refugee can mean more than leaving home. It may involve losing access to diagnosis, treatment records, medicines, specialist care, and long-term follow-up—making equitable cancer care an essential part of humanitarian response.
Observed every year on June 20, World Refugee Day is a United Nations international day that honors the strength, courage, and resilience of people forced to flee their homes because of conflict, violence, or persecution. First marked globally in 2001, it also calls attention to refugees’ rights, safety, dignity, and ability to rebuild their lives. A refugee is someone who has left their country because they cannot safely remain there and has sought protection in another country. Under the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugee status is linked to a well-founded fear of persecution based on factors such as race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.