Comment by cue_the_strings

When I was a kid in the 90s and early 00s in Serbia, later Montenegro, I knew 2-3 kids that had leukemia at some point, and if my memory serves me well, all of them survived. One neighbor kid had it really rough (was in therapy for years, looked like hell), but still survived. Even then, the treatments were so available that surviving it was the expected outcome.

Just years before it was quite common for children to die from it - I know 2 couples who lost kids to it in the 80s and early 90s.

Another thing was that a couple of kids had congenital heart conditions. Those didn't fare that well. My classmate from elementary survived that with a pacemaker, but a neighbor suddenly died in her mid-20s, that was really sad.