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UAE to have first national registry on cancer cases

ABU DHABI -The UAE will have its first national registry on cancer cases, said a health official. The registry, which will be officially launched tomorrow, will enhance efforts to assess attributable risk factors and establish trends of morbidity and mortality with special emphasis on indicators pertaining to age, gender, site and geography, Dr Mahmoud Fekri, Assistant Under-Secretary of the Central Preventive Medicine Department at the Ministry of Health yesterday told Khaleej Times.

He said the national registry would also enhance the study of epidemiology of malignant disease in the UAE community.

According to a recent report released by the department, cancer is the third leading cause of deaths in the UAE following cardiovascular diseases and accidents.

The disease accounted for 446 deaths in 1999 and 468 in 2000 or 8.7 per cent and 8.6 per cent respectively of the total deaths in the country, said the report.

It said cancer control strategies range between prevention, early detection and treatment encompassing rehabilitation, pain relief and other forms of palliative care.

It has been estimated that at least 50 per cent of cancer deaths and 40-50 per cent of cancer cases were preventable if immediate intervention was undertaken, according to statistics in the report.

The UAE has established a Cancer Control and Prevention Department since the early 1980s to curb the disease. The activities of the department have been developed in 1997 into a National Cancer Programme that included a National Cancer Committee.

A comprehensive plan to reduce cancer death rate in the country by 40 per cent by the year 2020 and improve curative and survival rates of detected cases by 2010, was also chalked out.

According to the report, recognising the essential role of reliable morbidity and mortality statistics to evaluate the cancer control programmes, the ministry has been given top priority to cancer registration at the country's specialised hospitals.

It said the cancer trends in the UAE were closely following global trends. Cancers of the lung and breast were the leading among the UAE males and females. Stomach cancer was the second most common in males, while cervical cancer was much more common in females.

According to a report released recently by the Gulf Centre for Cancer Registration (GCCR), a male preponderance was observed in all the AGCC countries except the UAE and Kuwait.

It mentioned that cancer is becoming an increasingly important issue for developing and developed countries alike, with almost two-thirds of the cases arising in developing countries where resources for treatment and prevention are scarce.

On the measures adopted by the AGCC's Council of Health to control and prevent the spread of cancer, Dr Tawfik A. M Khoja, Director-General of the Executive Board of the AGCC Health Ministers' Council had earlier revealed that a committee comprising representatives from the AGCC ministers of health to carry out strategies devised by the member states in curbing, preventing and managing cancer in the Gulf region.

He said the GCCR is embarking on defining the population-based incidence and gathering other epidemiological data of cancer in the AGCC states, in an attempt to effectively plan for cancer treatment and prevention, ensure early detection and improve the lives of cancer patients.

He said that most of the prevention and control activities against cancer in the region, which aim at coordinating joint efforts to manage the disease, are already in place to develop a unified cancer control programme in the member states.