Survival from childhood cancers in Eastern Africa: A population‐based registry study

Survival from childhood cancers in Eastern Africa: A population‐based registry study

Cancers occurring in children in Africa are often underdiagnosed, or at best diagnosed late. As a result, survival is poor, even for cancers considered ‘curable’. With limited population‐level data, understanding the actual burden and survival from childhood cancers in Africa is difficult. In this s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of cancer 2018-11, Vol.143 (10), p.2409-2415
Main Authors: Joko‐Fru, W. Yvonne, Parkin, D. Maxwell, Borok, Margaret, Chokunonga, Eric, Korir, Anne, Nambooze, Sarah, Wabinga, Henry, Liu, Biying, Stefan, Cristina
Format: Article
Language:eng
Subjects:
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia
Africa
Burkitt's lymphoma
Cancer
Children
Diagnosis
Health risk assessment
Leukemia
Lymphoma
Medical prognosis
Medical research
Population studies
Population-based studies
population‐based registry
Retina
Retinoblastoma
Sarcoma
Survival
Tumors
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Summary:Cancers occurring in children in Africa are often underdiagnosed, or at best diagnosed late. As a result, survival is poor, even for cancers considered ‘curable’. With limited population‐level data, understanding the actual burden and survival from childhood cancers in Africa is difficult. In this study, we aimed at providing survival estimates for the most common types of cancers affecting children aged 0–14 years, in three population‐based Eastern African registries; Harare, Zimbabwe (Kaposi sarcoma, Wilms tumour (WT), non‐Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), retinoblastoma, and acute lymphocytic leukaemia (ALL)), Kampala, Uganda (Burkitt lymphoma, Kaposi sarcoma, WT, and retinoblastoma), and Nairobi, Kenya (ALL, retinoblastoma, WT, Burkitt lymphoma, and Hodgkin lymphoma). We included cases diagnosed within the years 1998–2009 and followed up till the end of 2011. We estimated the observed and relative survival at 1, 3, and 5 years after diagnosis. We studied 627 individual patient records. Median follow‐up ranged from 2.2 months for children with Kaposi sarcoma in Harare to 30.2 months for children with ALL in Nairobi. The proportion of children lost to follow‐up was highest in the first year after diagnosis. In Harare and Kampala, the 5‐year relative survival was
ISSN:0020-7136
1097-0215