Trajectories to a cancer diagnosis: Why and when women seek help for breast symptoms in Vietnam

Abstract

During the 2000s, the incidence of breast cancer declined or stabilised in North America or Europe, but increased rapidly in African and Asian countries with historically low incidence (Bray et al., 2004;Joko-Fru et al., 2020). However, screening programs and breast cancer control strategies in low-and middle-income countries (LMIC) generally remain lacking (Dey, 2014;Samarasekera & Horton, 2017), resulting in late-stage presentation and lower breast cancer survival rates than in high-income countries (Anderson et al., 2011;Sankaranarayanan et al., 2010). The breast cancer mortality rate is considerably higher at 15.0 deaths per 100,000 persons in countries with a low or medium Human Development Index (HDI) as compared to 12.8 deaths per 100,000 persons in higher HDI countries