Meetings

Pediatric Updates

Two INCTR pediatric oncology updates were held respectively in Dubai, on 4th and 5th October (jointly with Shaukat Khanum in the course of its Annual Meeting), and in Chongqing, China, on 21st November (as a component of the Chinese Pediatric Oncology Society’s Annual Meeting). Approximately 50 people attended the meeting in Dubai, and 190, the meeting in Chongqing. Both workshops included presentations and discussions on the management of common pediatric neoplasms, the role of bone marrow transplantation, limb sparing surgery and palliative care, and were organized by Aziza Shad, Chairperson of INCTR’s Education sub-committee on Pediatric Oncology. Both were also supported by the OIA, NCI.

Dr Shad also attended a meeting in Jordan to discuss an additional workshop in 2004 for the training of Jordanian and Iraqi pediatric oncologists.

Report of Workshops at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Cairo

A workshop on lymphoma and a meeting for cancer nurses were held concurrently at the NCI Cairo in October, 2003. From the outset, this represented a collaborative venture between the Egyptian and UK branches of the INCTR, with generous support from Dr Joe Harford, Director of the Office of International Affairs at the NCI, Bethesda, USA. Prior to the three-day meetings, Professor Ama Rohatiner, Director of INCTR (UK), spent three days as a visiting professor working with Professor Hussein Khaled, Dean of the NCI, and the staff of the Department of Medical Oncology there.

Lymphoma Workshop

Lymphoma workshop participants, Cairo, Egypt.

The Faculty comprised invited speakers from Europe and Egypt. The program encompassed molecular and translational aspects, as well as recent advances in the management of Hodgkin's Disease and non-Hodgkin's Lymphomas. The workshop was very well at.tended and the presentations and proffered papers engendered lively discussion, particularly about areas of controversy in clinical practice.

Cancer Nurses' Meeting

In parallel with the lymphoma workshop, a meeting to discuss recent developments in cancer nursing brought together senior nurses from the NCI and eight Egyptian cancer centers, as well as nurses from Bethlehem and Gaza City. The meeting was organized by Dr Nagwa Elkateb, Director of Nursing Institute at the NCI and Miss Claire Murrell, her counterpart at St Bartholomew's Hospital (SBH) in London. Presentations were made by senior nurses from SBH and from the Royal Marsden Hospital. The program included presentations on leukemia, lymphoma, breast cancer, supportive care and palliative care. Once more, there was much audience participation and discussion, both within the context of the formal talks and subsequently.

The success of these two meetings will strengthen collaboration between the INCTR and the NCI, Cairo, which will be hosting the INCTR 2004 Annual Meeting.

Mexican Group for Retinoblastoma

Ian Magrath participated in the second meeting of the Grupo Mexicano de Retinoblastoma, which is being supported by INCTR. There was considerable enthusiasm for the progress made to date, and the group is preparing a manuscript for publication that includes data from many of the participating institutions.

Meeting of African Organization for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC)

INCTR staff participated in a meeting of AORTIC, which took place in Ghana on October 6th to 9th. The meeting was attended by many oncologists, pathologists, nurses and other health workers from many Sub-Saharan African countries. In addition to presentations relating to cancer in Africa, many discussion groups were held with a view to initiating projects in palliative care, treatment, epidemiology etc. The meeting was very successful, and INCTR expressed a willingness to work closely with AORTIC in the context of cancer in Africa.

Visiting Experts

Drs Black - left center - & Harris - right center - meet Dr Kline, administrator - center - of Scheer Memorial Hospital.

Stuart Brown visited Nepal twice in the last year accompanied on the latter occasion by two colleagues (palliative care specialists) from Canada in order to assess the needs for palliative care in the Kathmandu region. In the course of his second visit, from 28th October to 3rd November, Dr Brown visited the Tribhuvan Teaching Hospital, Hospice Nepal, Bhakatapur Cancer Center and Scheer Memorial Hospital, Banepa.

He also visited the Pain and Palliative Care Center in Calicut, India, which runs residential courses for palliative care throughout the year. In the course of this visit, Dr Brown and colleagues in Nepal developed a proposal for forming a palliative care group in conjunction with INCTR’s Nepalese branch to significantly boost the present rudimentary palliative care services in Nepal.

Ama Rohatiner, a medical oncologist, worked with physicians in the Dept. of Medical Oncology at the NCI, Cairo prior to the meetings there in October, attending multidisciplinary meetings and ward rounds.

Marty Malowar, an orthopedic surgeon from the Lombardi Cancer Center and Washington Cancer Institute, spent time in Shanghai in November, after the Pediatric Oncology update in China, discussing limb-sparing surgery. Dr Malowar was informed that limb-sparing surgical procedures (i.e., removal of a tumor in a limb and replacement by a prosthesis rather than amputating the limb) is not currently practiced in China. Dr Malowar is exploring possibilities of working with Chinese orthopedic surgeons to introduce this technique into some major Chinese cancer facilities.

Training

INCTR arranged a five-day training course for two doctors, two social workers, and two members of NNCTR/INCTR, INCTR’s branch in Nepal, in basic palliative care in Calicut, India, commencing on October 13th.

Recent Publications

Gutierrez MI, Siraj AK, Bhargava M, Ozbek U, Banavali S, Chaudhary MA, El Solh H, Bhatia K. Concurrent methylation of multiple genes in childhood ALL: Correlation with phenotype and molecular subgroup. Leukemia. 2003 Sept;17(9):1845-50.

Letter

Pediatric Oncology Worshop in Chongqing, China