Rafael Román Martel

Those are just two of many conclusions from a worldwide study comparing survival rates in nearly 2 million cancer patients.

In general, people in North America, Western Europe and other developed countries do better than people from Africa, South America and Eastern Europe.

Within the US, the analysis showed that black people with cancer have a worse chance of survival than white people. For breast cancer, white women had an 84.7% chance of surviving for five years after diagnosis, while for blacks the figure was 70.9%. The black-white disparity was also true of each of the smaller sub-populations within the US that the team were able to analyse. New York was the worst overall city in the US to live in.