Trend and magnitude of cancer mortality in Brazil and its relationship with socioeconomic conditions and health care provision

Introduction: The World Health Organization estimates 10 million deaths due to neoplasms in 2019, which accounts for a total of 17% of all causes of death on the planet. Inequalities in cancer mortality may be related to socioeconomic determinants of cancer incidence, as well as to the effectiveness and resilience of health services. Objectives: To estimate the trend and magnitude of cancer mortality in Brazil, to explore the relationship of these outcomes with socioeconomic indicators and health care provisions and services and, finally, to discuss the resilience and functionality of the Brazilian health system in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Data on the Municipal Human Development Index are made available by the United Nations Development Program. Information about health care provisions and death records were extracted from the public access databases of the Ministry of Health. Other demographic data were reported by the general censuses, with estimates for the intercensal years provided by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. Mortality was calculated by standardizing by gender and age using the population demographic profile proposed by the World Health Organization. Prais-Winsten regression was used for trend analyses. For other descriptive data, the relative percentage variation was used. Results: Cancer trends increased in the North and Northeast and remained mostly decreasing or stationary in the South, Southeast and Midwest. The variation of trends between intermediate regions was more pronounced in the North and Northeast. Intermediate regions with high rates of human development, health expenditures and hospital beds had lower increasing trends than the regions with low values of these indicators for most cancer groups studied. In 2018, the richest macroregions of the country, South and Southeast, applied more health funds on average per inhabitant and were able to increase the number of hospital beds and perform more hospital admissions and outpatient care procedures per capita. When these variables were measured in the intermediate regions, the same pattern of better outcomes was also verified for areas with higher HDI. The Brazilian government did not take into account that more vulnerable states were more susceptible to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The lack of planning led to a 25% reduction in SUS procedures. Conclusions: Increasing mortality trends in low-income regions may overload their already fragile local health system. Increasing the volume of health service provisions and reducing socioeconomic disparities may be able to prevent an increase in cancer mortality trends in marginalized regions of the country. Macroregions and most of the intermediate regions of the country are unequally prepared to meet the general health needs of their populations, which was exposed and aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The lack of government planning to increase the resilience of SUS resulted in increased disparities in the Brazilian health system. (AU)