UCI to open regional cancer registries

The Uganda Cancer Institute (UCI) has revealed plans to create several population-based cancer registry points to guide the country to effectively manage the increasing number of cancer-related cases.

The institute’s Executive Director, Dr. Jackson Orem says for a long time, they have been depending on only one population-based cancer registry to access data on cancer, but now, they are opening up more. He says this will help cancer experts to detect the most common types of cancer in each region using the respective data from the centres to be established across the country.

For a very long time, we have been relying on only one high-quality population-based cancer registry. Recently we did what we called a countrywide cancer diagnostic survey which has now actually shown us a very good map of what type of cancers are found in which part of the country,” Dr Oryem said.

Population-based cancer registries collect information on all new cancer cases that occur in a well-defined population, corresponding to a specific geographic area. The collection is done systematically from several sources, including hospitals, death certificates, and laboratory services.

Written by Moses Ndhaye