Pediatric Cancer Facts
- Childhood Cancer is the leading cause of non-accidental death in children
- More children die each year from pediatric cancer than from asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, congenital abnormalities and AIDS combined.
- Nine children die of cancer every school day.
- The cause of childhood cancer remains unknown. No one knows why the incidence of childhood cancer in the United States has increased at approximately one percent per year
- The incidences of the most common type of childhood cancer—acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) are up 10 percent; the incidences of childhood brain tumors are up more than 30 percent
- By the age of 20, 1 in every 330 children or adolescents is diagnosed with cancer
- More than 75 percent of drugs used to treat adults with cancer originated from studies in children with cancer
- In the last 50 years, more children have died from cancer than U.S. soldiers in all military actions combined
- In 1960, the overall survival rate for children with cancer was only 10 percent. Today, more than 70 percent survive.