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Monday, July 14, 2025

T&T Cancer Registry needs to be revived

by

Biobie-Lee Dixon
2353 days ago
20190203

“The T&T Can­cer Reg­istry is de­funct and needs to be re­vived.”

That’s the re­solve of T&T Can­cer So­ci­ety Chair­man Dr As­ante Van West-Charles-Le Blanc, ahead of World Can­cer Day to­mor­row.

Charles-Le Blanc made the com­ment in re­sponse to Sun­day Guardian’s ques­tion on the num­ber one chal­lenge abat­ing the ef­forts made in T&T by or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the Can­cer So­ci­ety in re­la­tion to the can­cer epi­dem­ic in this coun­try.

“A re­vived Can­cer Reg­istry would help be­cause hav­ing na­tion­al sta­tis­tics will help to de­ter­mine if progress is be­ing made.

“It will al­so help in the prop­er co­or­di­nat­ing of can­cer pro­grammes, and more im­por­tant­ly, it would give us an idea of what are the pre­dom­i­nant can­cers af­fect­ing our pop­u­la­tion,” Charles-Le Blanc ex­plained.

She said on many oc­ca­sions there were con­ver­sa­tions held amongst stake­hold­ers about the piv­otal role the Can­cer Reg­istry played in T&T, in deal­ing with can­cer and un­der­stand­ing the can­cer epi­dem­ic plagu­ing the is­land.

How­ev­er, with no swift ac­tion, the T&T Can­cer So­ci­ety has re­sort­ed to es­tab­lish­ing its own type of can­cer reg­istry via an elec­tron­ic record­ing sys­tem which will al­low it to have sta­tis­tics that can be ex­trap­o­lat­ed to the pop­u­la­tion of T&T.

This ven­ture, how­ev­er, does not ob­struct the Can­cer So­ci­ety’s ad­vo­ca­cy to have the na­tion­al Can­cer Reg­istry re­vamped ur­gent­ly, Charles-Le Blanc not­ed.

“We are con­stant­ly be­hind the Min­istry of Health to re­vive and re­vamp the Can­cer Reg­istry. And we ad­vo­cate for the pub­lic sec­tor to al­so join with the pri­vate sec­tor to re­vamp the Can­cer Reg­istry be­cause it is very im­por­tant.”

Asked if there was any ex­pla­na­tion giv­en as to why the Can­cer Reg­istry was lag­ging be­hind with im­por­tant sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta, La­m­ont-Greene replied, “Their ma­jor prob­lem was a hu­man re­source is­sue, cou­pled with the ar­cha­ic pa­per trail method of doc­u­ment­ing and fil­ing records. So the man­pow­er need­ed to ex­trap­o­late that da­ta and to re­al­ly build that Can­cer Reg­istry caused a big de­lay.”

She re­it­er­at­ed with­out a func­tion­ing Can­cer Reg­istry it is dif­fi­cult to know where re­sources need to go and if any progress at all is be­ing made by the ef­forts of those work­ing in the in­ter­est of can­cer pre­ven­tion.

When Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed the Can­cer Reg­istry for its lat­est sta­tis­tics in the num­ber of can­cer-re­lat­ed deaths, by gen­der and type of can­cer, we dis­cov­ered there was no up­dat­ed da­ta and the reg­istry could have on­ly pro­vid­ed us with sta­tis­tics for the pe­ri­od 2009-2013.

In an email re­sponse from the reg­is­trar, Ma­jorie La­m­ont-Greene, she stat­ed, the deaths quot­ed for any pe­ri­od were not nec­es­sar­i­ly the same peo­ple di­ag­nosed with­in that pe­ri­od.

“It should be not­ed that the da­ta pro­vid­ed is a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the can­cers record­ed in our reg­istry at this time be­cause da­ta rel­e­vant to any par­tic­u­lar year con­tin­ues to be re­ceived for a long time af­ter the end of that year. The data­base is there­fore con­tin­u­al­ly be­ing up­dat­ed,” La­m­ont-Greene wrote.

(See graph above).

On Sep­tem­ber 12, 2018- The In­ter­na­tion­al Agency for Re­search on Can­cer (IARC), re­leased the lat­est es­ti­mates on the glob­al bur­den of can­cer, re­veal­ing an alarm­ing 18.1 mil­lion new cas­es and 9.6 mil­lion deaths in 2018.

Charles-Le Blanc al­so not­ed that there was the need for an in­crease in screen­ing pro­grammes that would aid in ear­ly de­tec­tion, di­ag­no­sis, and ef­fec­tive treat­ment.


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