How Many People Die From Prostate Cancer Every Day
Prostate cancer kills around 1,100 men every day worldwide. Who is most at risk, why Black men face double the danger, and the screening debate explained.
Picture a waiting room in a urology clinic on a weekday morning. Most of the men there are in their sixties or seventies. A few came with their wives, who are doing most of the talking. One man is reading the same paragraph of a newspaper for the fourth time. Another keeps checking his phone. Almost none of them had any symptoms when this started. A routine blood test, a GP who thought it was worth checking, a number that came back a little higher than expected.
For most of the men in that room, the news will turn out to be manageable. Prostate cancer is often slow, and many men live with it for years or even decades. But not all prostate cancers are slow. Some are aggressive, and some are found only after they have spread to the bones. That is where the deaths come from, and there are a lot more of them than most people realise.
The headline number
Prostate cancer killed around 397,000 men worldwide in the latest global estimate from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC GLOBOCAN 2022). That works out to about 1,090 deaths every day, or roughly one every 80 seconds. You can watch total global deaths ticking upward on our live death counter.
| Time period | Prostate cancer deaths (approx.) |
|---|---|
| Per minute | 0.75 |
| Per hour | 45 |
| Per day | 1,090 |
| Per week | 7,600 |
| Per month | 33,100 |
| Per year | 397,000 |
The same data recorded around 1.47 million new cases in a year, making prostate cancer the second most commonly diagnosed cancer in men worldwide after lung cancer, and the fifth leading cause of cancer death overall. In more than half the countries of the world, it is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men.
How it compares with other cancers
Prostate cancer has a curious place in the cancer rankings. It is extremely common, yet its death rate is lower than its case numbers would suggest, because so many prostate cancers grow slowly and are found early.
| Cancer type | New cases per year | Deaths per year | Rough deaths per case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lung | 2,480,000 | 1,820,000 | High |
| Bowel | 1,930,000 | 904,000 | Medium |
| Breast | 2,310,000 | 666,000 | Low to medium |
| Prostate | 1,470,000 | 397,000 | Low |
| Liver | 865,000 | 758,000 | Very high |
All figures are from GLOBOCAN 2022. Compare prostate and liver cancer: prostate has nearly twice as many new cases, yet liver cancer kills almost twice as many people. Most men diagnosed with prostate cancer today will not die of it. But because it is so common, even a modest death rate adds up to hundreds of thousands of lives every year. We cover cancer as a whole in how many people die from cancer every day, and its sister disease in women in how many people die from breast cancer every day.
Prostate cancer in the UK and US
In the UK, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, and since 2020 it has been the most commonly diagnosed cancer overall in England, overtaking breast cancer, according to Prostate Cancer UK.
| United Kingdom | United States | |
|---|---|---|
| New cases per year | ~55,000 | ~314,000 (2025 estimate) |
| Deaths per year | ~12,000 | ~36,000 (2025 estimate) |
| Deaths per day | ~33 | ~98 |
| Lifetime risk of diagnosis | ~1 in 8 men | ~1 in 8 men |
| Main source | Cancer Research UK, Prostate Cancer UK | American Cancer Society |
That is around one man every 45 minutes in the United Kingdom, and roughly four an hour in the United States. In both countries, prostate cancer is the second biggest cancer killer of men, after lung cancer.
Who is most at risk
Prostate cancer has fewer lifestyle risk factors than many cancers. The three biggest are things nobody can change.
| Risk factor | What the evidence says |
|---|---|
| Age | Rare under 50; risk rises steeply after that, and most deaths are in men over 75 |
| Ethnicity | Black men have around double the risk of being diagnosed and dying |
| Family history | A father or brother with prostate cancer roughly doubles the risk |
| Inherited genes | BRCA2 variants in particular raise the risk and the chance of aggressive disease |
| Excess weight | Linked to a higher risk of advanced and fatal prostate cancer |
The ethnicity gap is one of the starkest in cancer medicine. Prostate Cancer UK estimates that 1 in 4 Black men in the UK will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, compared with about 1 in 8 men overall. In the US, the American Cancer Society reports that Black men are around twice as likely to die of the disease as white men. The reasons are still being studied, and are thought to involve a mix of genetics and unequal access to testing and treatment.
Age is the dominant factor. Prostate cancer deaths are concentrated in the 70 to 84 and 85 and over age groups. It is one of the reasons the gap in life expectancy between men and women is narrower at older ages than at birth, a topic we explore in why men die younger than women.
Where prostate cancer kills most
Recorded incidence is highest in North America, Northern and Western Europe, Australia and the Caribbean. But death rates follow a different map.
| Region | Pattern |
|---|---|
| Caribbean | Some of the highest death rates in the world, linked to populations of African descent |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | High and rising death rates; cancers often diagnosed late |
| Northern and Western Europe | High incidence, but much better survival |
| North America | High incidence, survival among the best in the world |
| East Asia | Low but rising incidence |
In wealthy countries, more cancers are found early through PSA blood tests, which pushes up the case numbers but keeps death rates relatively low. In much of Africa and the Caribbean, the opposite happens: fewer cancers are found early, so more men are diagnosed after it has already spread.
Why stage matters so much
Prostate cancer that stays inside the prostate is one of the most survivable cancers there is. Prostate cancer that has spread to the bones is not.
| Stage at diagnosis (US, ACS data) | 5-year relative survival |
|---|---|
| Localised (inside the prostate) | Over 99% |
| Regional (nearby tissue or lymph nodes) | Over 99% |
| Distant (spread to bones or other organs) | Around 37% |
This is why the debate over testing is so important, and so heated.
The PSA screening debate
The PSA test is a simple blood test that measures prostate-specific antigen, a protein made by the prostate. A raised level can be a sign of cancer. It can also be a sign of an enlarged prostate, an infection, recent exercise or nothing in particular.
That uncertainty is the problem. Screening every man with PSA tests finds many cancers that would never have caused harm in his lifetime. Treating those cancers, with surgery or radiotherapy, can leave men with incontinence or erectile problems for no benefit. On the other hand, not testing means some aggressive cancers are found only when they have spread.
| Argument | For routine PSA screening | Against routine PSA screening |
|---|---|---|
| Lives | Large European trial (ERSPC) showed fewer prostate cancer deaths | Many men need to be screened to prevent one death |
| Harms | Earlier diagnosis of aggressive cancers | Overdiagnosis of harmless cancers |
| Treatment | More men treated while curable | Side effects from treatment that was never needed |
| Modern practice | MRI scans before biopsy now reduce unnecessary biopsies | Evidence on MRI-based screening still being gathered |
The UK does not run a national prostate screening programme. Instead, men over 50 can ask their GP for a PSA test after discussing the pros and cons. In 2025, the UK National Screening Committee reviewed the evidence and proposed targeted screening only for some men with BRCA gene variants, a recommendation that campaigners argued did not go far enough, particularly for Black men. In the US, guidelines advise men aged 55 to 69 to make an individual decision with their doctor.
Modern tools are changing the maths. MRI scans before a biopsy, and "active surveillance" for low-risk cancers instead of immediate surgery, mean that far fewer men are now harmed by treatment they do not need. That makes the case for earlier testing stronger than it was 15 years ago, and large new trials, including the UK's TRANSFORM study, are trying to find the best way to screen.
Symptoms and when to see a doctor
Early prostate cancer usually causes no symptoms at all. When symptoms do appear, they are often caused by an enlarged prostate, which is very common and not cancer. Still, the NHS recommends seeing a GP if you notice:
- Needing to pee more often, especially at night
- Difficulty starting to pee, or a weak flow
- Feeling that your bladder has not fully emptied
- Blood in your urine or semen
- New, unexplained pain in your back, hips or pelvis
Because early cancer is often silent, men at higher risk, including Black men over 45 and anyone with a father or brother who had prostate cancer, may want to talk to their GP about testing even if they feel fine.
The future: more cases, more deaths
A major report by the Lancet Commission on prostate cancer, published in 2024, projected that annual cases worldwide could roughly double to 2.9 million by 2040, as populations live longer. Annual deaths were projected to rise by around 85%, to roughly 700,000. Most of that increase is expected in low- and middle-income countries, where testing and treatment are hardest to reach.
| Year | Projected new cases | Projected deaths |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | ~1,400,000 | ~375,000 |
| 2040 | ~2,900,000 | ~700,000 |
That is not because prostate cancer is becoming more aggressive. It is mostly because more men are living to the ages when it strikes, which is, in its own way, a sign of progress. You can see the wider shift towards age-related disease on our trending page and in the most common age to die.
What actually lowers the risk
There is no proven way to prevent prostate cancer, but the evidence suggests a few things help reduce the chance of dying from it:
- Know your risk. Age, ethnicity and family history matter most. If you are in a higher-risk group, talk to your GP before symptoms appear.
- Keep to a healthy weight. Obesity is linked to more aggressive prostate cancer.
- Stay active. Regular exercise is associated with better outcomes, and it helps almost every other cause of death too. See how much exercise it takes to lower your risk of dying.
- Do not smoke. Smokers diagnosed with prostate cancer are more likely to die of it.
It is also worth reading about the other big killers of older men, such as high blood pressure and bowel cancer, because the same check-up that finds a raised PSA can also catch those.
While you were reading this
You have spent about 12 minutes with this article. In that time, roughly 13 men around the world have died of prostate cancer. Most were in their seventies or eighties. Many of them had cancer that grew silently for years, without a single symptom, until it had already reached their bones.
You can see how those deaths fit into the full picture on our live death counter and the cancer page. If you want to see how your own risks stack up, try the risk calculator or the Death Clock.
Prostate cancer is a disease where knowledge matters. Knowing your risk, knowing the symptoms and knowing that you can ask for a test could be the difference between a cancer that is found in time and one that is not.
Data sources: International Agency for Research on Cancer (GLOBOCAN 2022, Global Cancer Observatory), Cancer Research UK, Prostate Cancer UK, American Cancer Society (Cancer Facts and Figures 2025), the Lancet Commission on prostate cancer (2024), European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC), UK National Screening Committee, NHS. Figures are rounded and represent the most recent available estimates; daily and hourly figures are derived from annual totals. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. If you are worried about prostate cancer, please speak to your GP.
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