UGANDA CANCER INSTITUTE TRAINS PERSONNEL IN CANCER REGISTRY

UGANDA CANCER INSTITUTE TRAINS PERSONNEL IN CANCER REGISTRY

By Our reporter

The Uganda Cancer Institute today concluded a 5-day’s training for personnel in cancer registry and participants awarded certificates.

In a bid to improve cancer services in the country, the Institute has taken on cancer registry as one of the key measures to improve service delivery.

Presiding over the event, the Executive Director of the UCI, Dr. Jackson Orem applauded the participants for choosing to train in cancer registry stating that the skills they have acquired are unique and are tendered towards the Centre of Excellence.

He also stated that with the mandate of spearheading cancer control in the country, Uganda Cancer Institute in its 10-year strategic plan targets to have 35% of the Ugandan population covered by cancer registration system.

Cancer registration is the process of continuous data collection, compilation, analysis, interpretation and reporting of information about cancer patients occurring in any demarcated geographical population. This is information used to inform the planning and implementation of cancer control activities in that community/population. Currently Uganda has two population based cancer registries in Kampala and Gulu that cover about 9% of the Uganda population.

Dr. Orem also informed the gathering of plans to expand the cancer registry coverage. This will be achieved through revitalizing the registries in Mbarara (Western region) and Arua-Kuluva (North West), widening the coverage of Gulu cancer registry (Northern region), establishing a new cancer registry in Mbale (Eastern region). To this effort, a model cancer registry was established in Eastern Uganda (Mayuge cancer registry) in 2017 to guide this process, as its anticipated that lessons learned from this process will be used to establish the other regional registries.

The World Bank through the East Central and Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA-HC) in its mandate to support her member states, has been working with Uganda Cancer Institute to provide seed funds to harness the establishment and or development of the Mayuge cancer registry (model cancer registry) and build capacity through Training of the staff at the UCI coordination office and the health facility focal persons.

Therefore, this training for Mayuge cancer registry staff has been coordinated by Uganda Cancer Institute and ECSA-HC to strengthen the cancer information and communication system in Uganda. The Mayuge Cancer registry covers 6 districts of greater Iganga (Iganga, Bugiri, Namayingo, Namutumba, Luuka and Bugweri) with a total population of 2.3 million people.