U.S. Northern Command, through
its Global Health Engagement program, is sponsoring one Center for Disease
Control and Prevention and three Bahamian experts on cancer that will assist in
setting up cancer registries at the knowledge exchange, “Cancer Surveillance
for the Caribbean”, scheduled for April 29-30 in Aruba. In
the end, this will result in The Bahamas’ first National Cancer Registry.
The overall goals of this knowledge exchange are to
stimulate the strengthening of cancer registration, to increase collaborative
research in the Caribbean, to encourage the strategic use of the information
for national cancer control programs and to discuss strategies for moving
forward. Global health experts will be
able to engage participants in face-to-face interactions and offer ways to
coordinate support of creating and implementing a cancer registry for this
Caribbean nation.
Cancer has
become a leading cause of death in The Greater Commonwealth of the Bahamas,
according to senior Bahamian health officials.
More recently, The Bahamas has been identified as having the highest
rate of Breast Cancer mutations (BRCA 1 and 2) in female breast cancer
patients.
Thus, the Bahamian
Ministry of Health has pledged support of a national cancer registry via
legislation and regulatory framework. The
MOH will house the registry and will allow the agency to engage the capacity of
their staff to facilitate, activate and collaborate with the Public Hospitals
Authority, The University of the West Indies, the Department of Statistics and
other professional organizations associated with the program in developing a
functioning population-based National Cancer Registry of The Bahamas.
The
need for a National Cancer Registry is clear.
There is a well-developed, centralized treatment center for the public
sector in The Bahamas, yet without an appropriate registry the true impact of
such a center may not be fully realized.
In
pursuit of the national goal of improved health status and quality of life, the
MOH in addition to international and domestic partners seek to ascertain health,
environmental, genetic, and physical factors to determine the epidemiological
profile of cancer in the country. This
database of knowledge will support efforts to define suitable interventions
that may one day lead to reduction in the incidence, prevalence and levels of cancer
mortality and morbidity.
Also
sponsoring this knowledge exchange are The Caribbean Public Health Agency, the
CDC, the National Cancer Institute, the International Agency for Research on
Cancer, the Pan American Health Organization, and the African Caribbean Cancer
Consortium.