Pre-implementation assessment of a national Ethiopian pediatriccancer registry

摘要

In Ethiopia, cancer accounts for about 5.8% of total national mortality. It isestimated that the annual incidence of cancer is ∼60 960 cases and theannual mortality is more than 44 000, which is likely anunderestimation. TikurAnbessa Specialized Hospital (TASH) in Addis Ababa is home to the nation’sfirst and largest pediatric hematology-oncology service, opened in 2013 inpartnership with The Aslan Project (hereafter called Aslan). Although the survivalrate for acute lymphoblastic leukemia is 80% or better in the United States, it isestimated that the survival rate is below 20% in Ethiopia. Part of the problem isthat there is minimal well-documented demographic information regarding patients,their diseases, and disease outcomes. The World Health Organization (WHO) providesrecommendations for creating cancer registries. Aslan provided funding to support data clerks in 2 hospitalsin Ethiopia: TASH and Jimma University Specialized Hospital (Jimma, Ethiopia). Aslanalso supported initial training on data collection for staff at those institutions,as well as staff at St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College (AddisAbaba, Ethiopia), and Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital (Mekelle,Ethiopia). As part of thecollaboration with the TASH/Aslan/University of North Carolina (UNC) pediatrichematology-oncology team, a team of UNC pharmacists traveled to TASH in March 2019with the objective of performing a pre-implementation assessment for introducing anational pediatric cancer registry.