Vision of Cancer Registry founder being realised

Jul 19, 2015 News

“Cancer isn’t going anywhere anytime soon,” was the informed disclosure of Registrar of the Guyana Cancer Registry, Penelope Layne, as she chaired a forum on Wednesday to launch Guyana’s first Cancer Surveillance Report.
Layne noted that the Registry, which first opened its doors in May 2000, was brought into being to give attention to the situation of cancer in Guyana. The Registry was the brainchild of Dr Walter Chin.
“For those who do not know Dr Chin, it was his interest in the alarming trend of cancer that triggered the establishment of the Cancer Registry in Guyana,” said Layne as she recalled that “it was his vision that would be able to produce a report that would lead to the development of comprehensive cancer programmes piloted by the Ministry’s Chronic Diseases Division”.
Dr Chin’s vision is well on the way to becoming a reality, Layne asserted, as she prepared the audience gathered at the Herdmanston Lodge in Queenstown for a presentation from the Ministry of Health’s Director of Disease Control, Dr Morris Edwards. His was one entitled “A Profile of Cancers in Guyana from 2003-2012,” and is contained in the Cancer Surveillance Report which seeks to decipher the data compiled by the Cancer Registry.
The Registry is headed by the Registrar who is internationally-trained to put in place, manage and maintain the facility. She is assisted by two staffers.

PAHO Representative, Dr William Adu-Krow (right) hands over a copy of the Cancer Surveillance Report to Minister of Public Health, Dr George Norton.

According to Layne “data collection is painstaking work but they do an excellent job.”
Since the abstract data compiled by the Registry is population based, data is drawn from public hospitals including the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, Linden Hospital Complex, Bartica, Lethem, New Amsterdam, Suddie and the West Demerara Regional Hospital.
In addition to private hospitals including the Dr Balwant Singh Hospital, Mercy, Woodlands, Davis Memorial and Medical Arts, the Registry has also been collecting data from the Guyana Cancer Society, the Cancer Institute, Beacon Foundation and also from locations in the interior as well as from private practitioners.
The Registry staffers are tasked with reviewing all notification of deaths associated with cancer at the Ministry’s Statistical Unit. The data that is collected, according to Dr Morris, is comprehensive, and includes demographic information, the basis for diagnosis, the sites of the cancers, the morphology of the cancers, the behaviours of the cancers as well as their stage, grade and the type of treatment that is offered or not offered to patients. Added to this, the Registry records the status of patients – that is, whether they are dead or alive, in addition to their names and addresses.
“If this is not representative of what is happening in the country (as it relates to cancer) then I don’t know what else is?” said Dr Morris, of the work of the Registry.
The data acquired by the Registry is entered into a CANREG database. But in order to maintain patient confidentiality, so that it could have been analysed by Dr Morris for the purpose of the Surveillance Report, the Registry staff was tasked with stripping all identifiers from the database.
As part of his analysis of the data, Dr Morris focused on frequency of patient demographics as well as the cancer characteristics. He then used rates which were calculated using the population from the 2002 census.
“I looked at potential years of life loss using the World Bank estimates for life expectancy which was 62.5 years for males and 65 years for females,” Dr Morris disclosed.
He added that while the Registry’s database contained 8,163 records, the period under consideration (2003-2012) saw a total of 6,518 cancer diagnoses being made. This therefore translated to a cumulative incidence rate over the 10-year period of 867.7 cases per 100,000 population, according to Dr Morris, who noted that the average annual incidence rate is 86.8 per 100,000 population.
Of interest was the fact that more females, a total of 3,956 (60.7 percent), were affected by the disease compared to 2,561 males (39.3 percent).
Dr Morris’ extensive analysis contained in the Report offers a general overview of the cancers in Guyana and gives understanding as to the state of individual cancers as well as those that affect children, and also provides insight to the way forward in terms of effectively tackling the disease.
Based on his analysis there were 1,090 cases of breast cancer during the 10-year period. This allowed the Chronic Disease Director to conclude that the leading cause of cancer death in Guyana is breast cancer, followed by cancer of the cervix, which accounted for 1,014 cases; prostate (865 cases); colo-rectal (440 cases); uterus (325 cases); stomach (240 cases); lung (233 cases); liver (219 cases); ovary (212 cases) and lymphoma (136 cases).
Compiling the data saw the Ministry of Health’s collaboration with the Pan American Health Organisation, which has committed to continuing its support towards the fight against cancer.
Even as she considered the depth of Dr Morris’ analysis outlined in the Surveillance Report – which was on Wednesday presented to Minister of Public Health, Dr George Norton by PAHO Representative, Dr William Adu-Krow – an emotional Layne noted that “my one regret today is that the late Dr Walter Chin is not here today to share in this milestone.”
She however noted that while the data has been transformed into comprehensible information “knowing what we are dealing with is half of the solution to this (cancer) problem.”
Among Dr Morris’ recommendations is that a comprehensive cancer programme be brought into being.