The Cancers You Can Actually Prevent
When people think about cancer prevention, genetics and lifestyle usually come to mind first. A Lancet study published this year adds a third category that gets far less attention in everyday conversation: infections. In India, nearly 1.9 lakh cancer cases in 2024 — about 12% of the country’s entire annual cancer burden — were linked to infections that are, in most cases, preventable or treatable.
Where the numbers actually come from
The study breaks the 1.9 lakh figure down by the specific infection involved. HPV (human papillomavirus) accounts for the largest share, over 100,000 cases, almost entirely cervical cancer. H. pylori, the stomach bacterium linked to ulcers, contributes around 47,000 cases, mainly gastric cancer. Epstein-Barr virus is linked to roughly 22,000 cases. Hepatitis B accounts for about 10,000 cases, and Hepatitis C for approximately 5,300 — both primarily liver cancer.
Why this framing matters
Cancers caused by infections sit in a different category from cancers driven by inherited genetics: an infection can often be prevented with a vaccine, caught early with a test, or treated outright before it ever progresses to cancer. The study’s authors were specific about this, naming HPV and hepatitis B vaccination, testing and treatment for H. pylori and hepatitis viruses, safe injection practices, and screening for precancerous lesions as the concrete interventions already available.
The honest caveat
Experts involved in the research were clear that vaccination alone isn’t sufficient — screening programs and timely treatment matter just as much. A vaccinated population that never gets screened still misses cancers from infections that predate the vaccine, or from the infections a vaccine doesn’t cover. Prevention here means the full chain: vaccination where available, testing where infection is suspected, and screening on a regular schedule, not any single step in isolation.
What this means practically
If you’ve been putting off a cervical screening, an H. pylori test after unexplained stomach symptoms, or a hepatitis B/C screening despite a known risk factor, this is the concrete reason those aren’t just routine box-ticking — they sit directly on the causal path to roughly one in eight cancer cases in the country.
General health information, not personal medical advice. If you have risk factors for any of these infections, talk to a doctor about appropriate testing and vaccination.
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