“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.