🩷Cancer and high-cost care· 2022-2025

Breast cancer: 2,000 cases and 700 deaths a year in Uruguay

The State added MRI, prostheses and four drugs between 2022 and 2024. The National Academy of Medicine warns that cases are rising among women under 50.

Under wayQuestioned management

Bodies involved

Ministerio de Salud Pública · Fondo Nacional de Recursos · Administración de los Servicios de Salud del Estado (ASSE)

What it is

Breast cancer is the most frequent type of cancer among Uruguayan women, according to the imPACT assessment presented to the Health Ministry. The Ministry reported in October 2024 that around 2,000 new cases are diagnosed each year —five a day— and that some 700 women die annually, two a day; one in eleven women could develop it. Some 78% of cases are diagnosed after age 50 and 17% between 40 and 49. The recommended screening is a mammogram every two years between ages 50 and 69, with the co-payment waived in that bracket and one day of special paid leave to have the test.

What is questioned

Between 2022 and 2024 the State added several benefits. Decree 236/022, of July 2022, covered breast prostheses at no cost; Ordinance 932 added lymphoscintigraphy for sentinel node study; and since January 2024 free breast MRI applies to high-risk women —"genetic alterations, dense breasts, or who have received prior chest radiotherapy"— announced on 19 October 2023 by then Minister Karina Rando and National Cancer Control Programme director Marisa Fazzino, covering users of ASSE, Police and Military Health and most private providers. El Observador also reported that the FNR added ribociclib in 2022 and that in 2023 trastuzumab and pertuzumab were added in the pre-surgical phase and TDM-1 in the post-surgical phase. More than 50% of women are diagnosed at stages I and II and around 9% when the cancer is already advanced or metastatic. The imPACT assessment, in parallel, noted that mammography "is offered opportunistically" and that "mammography services are not subject to quality assurance processes".

Why it matters to you

That systematic screening starts at 50 while 17% of cases appear between 40 and 49 defines who is detected in time and who is not. Every benefit that enters coverage —an MRI, a prosthesis, a drug— stops being paid out of pocket or claimed through a lawsuit.

Where it stands

Under way

On 25 October 2025 the National Academy of Medicine warned that "a current concern in our country is the rise in breast cancer cases among women under 50", the bracket outside systematic screening, and noted that HPV test coverage —the central test for cervical cancer— "is 70% of women, with the objective of reaching 90%". As of this file's closing date (August 2026) there is nothing on record after October 2025 about changes to the screening scheme.

The open-data cross-reference

What the state awarded to the bodies and companies named in this file, according to the official Compras Estatales data. It is a cross-reference for scale, not proof of irregularity: it includes contracts nobody questioned.

How this cross-reference was builtcontracts whose object mentions “resonancia” · everything recorded under 88 buying units of the named bodies (not only this case) · between 2022 and 2025

$ 48.484.584 Awarded (cross-ref)

372Contracts

33Suppliers

Who was paid

Suppliers ranked by amount awarded in the cross-reference. A contract with several suppliers counts in full against each one: this is a ceiling, not a split.

Which body paid

What it bought

Spending by category, from price times quantity of each awarded item, in the contract currency.

Contracts per year

The detail

30 contracts

The largest contracts in the cross-reference, high to low. Tap one for its record and the link to the official purchase.

Amounts in pesos, normalised. Records with impossible quantities are excluded from the total. Open-data cross-referencing can show purchases of mammographs, supplies and imaging services by ASSE and other bodies, but not screening coverage or the drugs financed by the FNR, which are negotiated outside the general state procurement regime. The quality-control findings correspond to the 2022 assessment and the sources do not report whether they were corrected.