🇦🇷 Cancer in Argentina

The Ministry of Health's surveillance system, SIVER-Ca, counted 59,537 deaths from malignant tumours (C00 to C97) in 2024 from the death certificates the provinces send to the national health statistics directorate, 29,607 in men and 29,930 in women; 76.2% were in people aged 60 and over. Counting all tumours (C00 to D48), the 62,427 deaths were 16.7% of the 374,636 deaths in the country, after cardiovascular (28.0%) and respiratory disease (20.6%). By site, lung cancer caused 8,369 deaths (14.1%), colorectal cancer 7,455 (12.5%), breast cancer 5,912 (5,817 of them women, 19.4% of cancer deaths in women), pancreas 4,365 and prostate 3,483. From 2014 to 2024 the age-standardised cancer death rate fell from 123.97 to 97.79 per 100,000 in men (an annual change of -2.3%) and from 88.93 to 78.25 in women (-1.3%), both statistically significant. Lung cancer mortality in men fell 36% over the same decade, breast cancer mortality 14% and prostate cancer mortality 26%. The report notes that less than 10% of deaths in Argentina are recorded with an ill-defined or unknown cause.

The 2024 mortality report gives age-standardised cancer death rates of 98.05 per 100,000 men and 80.62 per 100,000 women nationally. Tierra del Fuego, Santa Cruz and Neuquén had the highest rates in men, Tierra del Fuego about 40% above the national average at 148.9; Santiago del Estero had the lowest in men (66.1). In women, Santa Cruz was highest (105.5, about 20% above the national average) and Tucumán among the lowest (68.6). The report says that earlier SIVER-Ca reports showed falling cancer mortality with important differences by tumour and province, which suggests inequalities in access to early diagnosis and treatment. In the Sur region, which groups the Patagonian provinces, tumours were 24.3% of all deaths in 2024, against 14.4% in the north-west. The Ministry's mortality page itself gives 8,378 and 8,371 for 2024 lung cancer deaths in different paragraphs; the report's table gives 8,369, used here.

The Registro Oncopediátrico Hospitalario Argentino, founded in 2000 by the Fundación Kaleidos and part of the national cancer body since 2010, gathers cases from 91 reporting sources. Its 2025 book gives an incidence of 131.0 cancers a year per million children under 15 for 2000 to 2022, stable over the period, and estimates that its average of 1,358 cases a year is about 92% of the 1,484 expected at the average rate of the International Incidence of Childhood Cancer series. Leukaemias are the commonest, then central nervous system tumours and lymphomas. Five-year survival for 2010 to 2019 was 70.3% (ten-year 67.7%): 70.7% for leukaemias, 60.9% for central nervous system tumours, 84.5% for lymphomas, 92.9% for retinoblastoma and 52.3% for bone tumours. Five-year survival rose from 59.7% for children diagnosed in 2000 to 2004 to 70.9% for 2015 to 2019. In 2013 to 2022, 76% were treated in public hospitals and 45% of public hospital cases in two reference centres; in 2018 to 2022, 48% moved to another province at some point. Childhood cancer mortality fell 20% between 1999 to 2000 and 2021 to 2022.

The Sistema de Vigilancia Epidemiológica y Reporte del Cáncer (SIVER-Ca) is the Ministry's area for collecting, analysing and publishing information on cancer. It draws on vital statistics (mortality data from the national health statistics directorate, the national statistics institute INDEC and the national population register), on the National Risk Factor Survey, on hospital-based registries grouped in the network of the Registro Institucional de Tumores de Argentina (RITA), and on population-based registries, which depend on the provinces and whose data IARC publishes. Its page states that more than 139,000 new cancers and more than 400,000 people living with cancer were estimated for 2024, and that recognising cancer as a notifiable event is expected to open access to sources and increase notification to RITA and the population-based registries. The Ministry's page on population-based registries says that recognition has come: cancer is a notifiable event, included in the manual of notifiable events by Ministry Disposition 1/2026. The same page lists ten population-based registries, nine provincial (Tucumán, Santa Fe, Chaco, Entre Ríos, San Luis, Tierra del Fuego, Mendoza, Neuquén and Córdoba) and one for the district of General Pueyrredón in Buenos Aires province, started between 2001 and 2022, with stated covered populations adding up to 15,738,789, about a third of the 45.6 million people counted in the 2022 census. The 2024 mortality report calls the development of RITA and the consolidation of provincial population registries key actions towards wider and more timely coverage. RITA's case counts were not found in the pages read.

Decree 459/2025, dated 7 July 2025 and issued under the delegated powers of Law 27.742, ordered the transformation of the Instituto Nacional del Cáncer, a decentralised body under the Ministry's Secretariat of Health Management, into an organisational unit of the Ministry. Its recitals note that Law 27.285 had given the institute decentralised status and that it had developed SIVER-Ca, and state that its registries would remain fully operational under the Sistema Integrado de Información Sanitaria Argentino and that the Ministry would become the authority applying the childhood cancer law, Law 27.674. Article 23 repeals Law 27.285 and Decree 1286 of 9 September 2010 once the Ministry's new structure is in force. The Ministry's pages now describe the Dirección Nacional del Cáncer as the body that designs and implements cancer prevention and control policy, runs the national programmes for breast, cervical and colorectal cancer, childhood cancer, familial cancer and palliative care, and implements RITA, the childhood registry and the screening information system.

The census volume on health and social security describes the three coexisting subsystems: a universal public one that guarantees access to health care to everyone living in Argentina; social security, which covers people in registered employment or in the simplified tax regime for small contributors; and a private one offering voluntary cover to those who pay for it, directly or by redirecting their contributions. Of the population counted in 2022, 27,787,124 (60.9%) had an obra social or prepaid plan (including PAMI), 1,514,231 (3.3%) had state health programmes or plans, and 16,317,432 (35.8%) had the public system alone. The census notes that everyone living in or passing through Argentina is guaranteed free access to public health services and medicine provision programmes. The census does not separate obras sociales from prepaid plans. The national health insurance funds are regulated by the Superintendencia de Servicios de Salud, and retired people are mostly covered by PAMI, which says it covers 5 million people.

The emergency Programa Médico Obligatorio was approved by Ministry of Health Resolution 201 of 9 April 2002 as the basic set of services guaranteed by the insurers covered by Law 23.660. Resolution 310 of 7 April 2004 rewrote its medicines section: insurers cover outpatient medicines in its Annex III at 40% for usual medicines and 70% for chronic conditions, against a reference price, and at 100% they cover, among others, medicines for oncological use according to oncological protocols approved by the enforcement authority. Item 7.4 adds 100% coverage of supportive medication to prevent and treat vomiting caused by anticancer drugs and of pain medication for cancer patients, both according to approved protocols, and item 7.5 gives 100% coverage, financed by the solidarity redistribution fund, to medicines on specific lists of the then special programmes administration. Resolution 201 already set 100% coverage for medicines given to inpatients. Law 26.682 of 2011 on prepaid medicine requires prepaid companies to cover at least the Programa Médico Obligatorio in force and bars waiting periods for services included in it. This page read the law as enacted; later amendments were not read.

The Superintendencia de Servicios de Salud administers the Fondo Solidario de Redistribución, whose resources are directed to reimbursements for services of high economic impact that need prolonged cover, so that members of the national health insurance system receive the same type and level of care. Resolution 1200 of 2012 created the Sistema Único de Reintegro (SUR) to support insurers financially for services of low incidence and high economic impact and for prolonged treatments. Resolution 731 of 28 March 2023 created the Sistema Único de Reintegro por Gestión de Enfermedades (SURGE) to replace it, with a disease-management approach, for services from 1 April 2023; its three annexes set the procedure, the requirements, coverage, devices, medicines and maximum amounts. The Superintendencia publishes quarterly reports of its reimbursement transfers to the obras sociales under SUR and SURGE, filed by year. Which cancer medicines are on the SURGE annexes, and the amounts, were not read for this page.

PAMI's procedure page states that it gives its members 100% coverage of cancer medicines, which must be prescribed on an electronic prescription with a form, a clinical summary and supporting documents. Its cancer care plan, PICTO, offers members on its list of cancer patients a choice of oncologist, faster appointments and psycho-oncology support. How many people PAMI treats for cancer was not found on the pages read. The Banco de Drogas Especiales complements the provinces in supplying medicines to patients with public cover only, mainly with cancer, for more than 100 cancer conditions. To use it, a patient must show through a negative certificate from the social security administration, renewed every three months, that they have no obra social or prepaid plan, be treated in a public hospital, and have an electronic prescription from a specialist, valid for 30 days, for a medicine on the bank's complementary list. A change of treatment needs the province's written statement of why it cannot supply the medicine. The list read for this page, a PDF created in March 2023, names about a hundred medicines; the immune checkpoint inhibitors on it are nivolumab and pembrolizumab.

The Comisión Nacional de Evaluación de Tecnologías de Salud was created by Ministry of Health Resolution 623 of 2018, inside the Ministry's general coordination unit, while a law for a national assessment agency was debated. Decree 344 of 6 July 2023 re-created it as the Comisión Nacional de Evaluación de Tecnologías Sanitarias y Excelencia Clínica, a deconcentrated body of the Secretariat of Access to Health, to assess technologies by the quality of evidence, clinical benefit, economic impact on equity and public health, and to formulate recommendations on incorporation, disinvestment, form of use, financing and coverage, which are a national technical reference; the technical definitions put to it are binding on the Ministry of Health and its decentralised and deconcentrated bodies. Its technologies are medicines, vaccines, medical devices and clinical and surgical procedures. It works through a patients' table, a prioritisation table, a technical table that votes on the domains of a value framework, a recommendations table, a transparency table and a researchers' table that carries out the assessments, and it publishes draft reports for public consultation. The pages read state no cost-effectiveness threshold.

Decree 150 of 1992, in the text ordered by Decrees 1890/92 and 177/93 that ANMAT publishes, sets three routes. Under article 3 the authority has 120 calendar days to decide an application, counted for imports from the Annex II countries (among them Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, Chile and Finland) from the inspection of the factory, which is to be done within 60 days. Under article 4, a medicine authorised for public use in at least one Annex I country (the United States, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, Israel, Canada, Austria, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Spain and Italy) can be registered for import, and that registration is automatic on presentation of the current official certificate of the authorisation, labels, leaflets and bioavailability data. Under article 5, a new medicine not authorised in an Annex I country needs evidence of its efficacy and safety. ANMAT states that the Pan American Health Organization re-qualified it in 2017 as a regional reference authority for medicines and vaccines, that its inspectorate has been a full member of the Pharmaceutical Inspection Co-operation Scheme since 2008, and that it became a regulatory member of the International Council for Harmonisation in 2024. Measured approval times for cancer medicines were not found; see the gaps.

Clinical pharmacology trials are evaluated by the clinical trials area of ANMAT's directorate for the evaluation and registration of medicines under Disposition 6677/10, the good clinical practice regime. A poster by ANMAT staff (Papayannis and colleagues) describes operational changes from 2017 based on Disposition 4008/17 and a new online platform, and analyses the 327 trials submitted from June 2017 to June 2019: neoplasms were the main therapeutic area with 79 trials (24.15%), followed by respiratory disease with 38; 82% included no vulnerable population and 45% of the products tested were biological. The mean evaluation time of the approved trials, up to the authorising disposition, was 58 working days (standard deviation 27, median 52), falling over the four half-years studied from a median of 69 to 44. The text of Disposition 4008/17 itself, and any deadline it sets, was not read for this page.

The Programa Nacional de Control de Cáncer de Mama recommends one mammogram every two years for asymptomatic women of average risk aged 50 to 69; women with symptoms or a relevant personal or family history need individual assessment at any age, and those under 50 or over 69 are outside the population screening target. Its goal is screening coverage above 70% of the target population. The cervical programme describes Argentina's comprehensive prevention strategy since 2011: HPV vaccination for people aged 11 on the national calendar, the Pap smear from 25 (two tests a year apart, then every three years if both are normal) and, from 30, where available, the HPV test, available in most provinces and repeated every five years when negative, with a Pap smear or colposcopy when positive. The colorectal programme, created by Ministerial Resolution 2173 of 2013, uses a biennial faecal immunochemical test for people aged 50 to 75 without symptoms or a relevant history, with colonoscopy after a positive result, and a risk-assessment clinic and colonoscopy for people at raised risk. The three programmes record their tests in an online screening information system, SITAM.

The 4th National Risk Factor Survey, carried out in 2018 and published by INDEC with the national health secretariat in October 2019, reports that 66.0% of women aged 50 to 70 had had a mammogram in the last two years, with no significant change from 2013; the share ranged from 84.4% in the City of Buenos Aires, 83.1% in Tierra del Fuego and 80.9% in La Pampa to 46.1% in Formosa and 47.9% in Corrientes (34.3% in Santiago del Estero, an estimate the survey calls unreliable). It was 70.7% for women with an obra social or prepaid plan against 46.4% for those with public cover only, and rose with education from 43.8% to 75.3%. 70.3% of women aged 25 to 65 had had a Pap smear in the last two years (76.3% with an obra social or prepaid plan). 31.6% of people aged 50 to 75 had ever had a test for bowel cancer, faecal occult blood test, colonoscopy or barium enema, up significantly from 24.5% in 2013, with 51.3% in the City of Buenos Aires and 58.0% in Tierra del Fuego. A later national survey of screening uptake was not found.

The Régimen de Protección Integral del Niño, Niña y Adolescente con Cáncer, Law 27.674, regulated by Decree 68/2023, applies to children and adolescents with cancer up to 18 inclusive, whatever their health cover. Its benefits, listed by the Ministry, are 100% coverage of services, cancer medicines and clinical support; a monthly financial allowance while active treatment lasts; work leave for one parent, legal representative or carer employed in the public or private sector during active treatment, paid by the social security administration (ANSES) in place of the salary; free use of public transport and collective land transport; access to suitable housing or adaptation of the home for families in social vulnerability; and access to education. Access is through the Certificado Único Oncopediátrico (CUOP): the treating professional registers the child in the national childhood cancer registry, ROHA, with the required documents, and the Ministry's programme audits the record and emails the certificate. An orange certificate covers active treatment and all benefits; a blue control certificate, after treatment ends and until five years from diagnosis or age 18, keeps transport and education. A relapse recorded in ROHA reactivates the orange certificate. Since Decree 459/2025 the Ministry of Health is the law's enforcement authority.

The Ministry describes the Banco de Drogas Especiales as complementary to provincial coverage, with the express aim of equalising standards of care and achieving greater equity in access to cancer medicines across the country, by supplying medicines when the patient's province of residence cannot provide them, for more than 100 cancer conditions. Patients whose national identity document is being processed can apply with proof of that; residents who have never had one can present a provisional residence certificate or, failing that, a note from their consulate. Treatment continues on a renewal form completed by the treating doctor every three treatment cycles, with the reports of the tests used to assess response for advanced disease, and a change because of side effects needs ANMAT's pharmacovigilance report form. Inside insurance, the same principle runs through the national package, which makes cancer medicines under approved protocols free to the patient. How many patients the bank supplies, what it spends and how long deliveries take were not found in a form that could be read; see the gaps.

The Programa Nacional de Cáncer Familiar (PROCAFA) was created in August 2011, the Ministry states, in response to the need for strategies of early detection and comprehensive management of people at high risk of cancer, which require molecular techniques and multidisciplinary prevention covering organic, emotional, social and cultural aspects. Among the directorate's listed functions are implementing the Sistema de Información de Tumores Hereditarios (SITHER), described as a unified, freely consulted database of genomic variants in hereditary cancer, and improving the quality of cancer centres through the creation of genetic counselling clinics, counselling spaces and palliative care teams. The colorectal programme sends people with a family history, polyposis, inflammatory bowel disease or criteria for Lynch syndrome to a risk-assessment clinic and colonoscopy rather than the stool test. How many variants SITHER holds and how many people PROCAFA has seen were not read for this page.

Counted from ClinicalTrials.gov participation data in OnCo's graph on 4 November 2026: 446 trial records list Argentina among their countries, 362 phase 3, 42 phase 2, 23 phase 2/3, 18 phase 1/2 and 1 phase 1. By ClinicalTrials.gov status, 138 were recruiting, 201 active but not recruiting, 94 completed and 12 terminated. The commonest lead sponsors are Merck Sharp & Dohme (63), Bristol-Myers Squibb (46), AstraZeneca (42), Hoffmann-La Roche (36) and Pfizer (26), and the commonest first-listed cancers non-small-cell lung cancer (94), prostate cancer (34) and hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer (30). The lead sponsors that are not companies are all academic groups abroad: ECOG-ACRIN (TMIST), the International Extranodal Lymphoma Study Group (IELSG37), the Histiocyte Society (LCH-III), the Queensland Centre for Gynaecological Cancer (LACC) and the Lymphoma Study Association; none of the 446 has an Argentine lead sponsor. Several company trials run in few countries with Argentina among them, such as MOUNTAINEER (5 countries). Across all conditions, ClinicalTrials.gov listed 4,776 studies with a site in Argentina when OnCo counted in September 2026, and OpenAlex counts between 231 and 316 oncology papers a year with an author in Argentina from 2021 to 2025, 1,405 in all. The national cancer directorate also funds research grants and fellowships through its research promotion programme.

The Ministry's incidence page quotes GLOBOCAN 2024, and the 2024 mortality report says IARC's incidence depends on the population-based registries that meet the standard for Cancer Incidence in Five Continents, with data for 2013 to 2017 in its 2024 edition. The Ministry's page lists ten population-based registries and the populations they cover, but which of them meet that standard, and their own rates, were not read; Cancer Incidence in Five Continents itself was not opened. The hospital registry network RITA publishes no case counts that were found. Survival for adults in Argentina was not read either: only the childhood registry's survival figures are given. The gap between the 59,537 deaths counted and IARC's 71,570 is stated, not explained.

Decree 150/92 gives ANMAT 120 calendar days for an ordinary application and makes registration automatic for imports of medicines approved in an Annex I country, but ANMAT publishes no measured registration times for cancer medicines on the pages read. Amendments to Decree 150/92 after the ordered text ANMAT publishes, including any made since 2023, were not read. How a newly registered cancer medicine becomes part of an insurer's obligations, beyond the general rule of Resolution 310/2004, was not traced. Which cancer medicines are on the SURGE reimbursement annexes and the amounts were not read. CONETEC's list of published assessments is loaded by a script and was not read, so no cancer assessment is cited. The text of ANMAT Disposition 4008/17 was not read; the trial authorisation times come from the ANMAT staff poster.

The Ministry's legislation pages (argentina.gob.ar/normativa) returned server errors, and the live Boletín Oficial timed out, so Decrees 459/2025 and 344/2023 were read from Internet Archive copies and Resolutions 731/2023, 201/2002 and 623/2018 from Ministry of Health copies. The page of the Ministry's Dirección de Asistencia Directa por Situaciones Especiales returned not found, so what it offers is not described. IARC's CanScreen5 fact sheets for Argentina load by script. PAMI's plan page carries, in markup that is not displayed, figures on the share of people in cancer treatment who are its members; because the page does not show them, they are not used. No national survey of screening uptake later than 2018 was found, and SITAM's own figures were not published on the pages read. The Banco de Drogas list read is a file created in March 2023; whether a newer list exists was not established.