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INCTR 10th Anniversary Meeting and Annual General Assembly

Strategies to Control Cancer in Developing Countries

Meeting Themes

This year, the World Health Organization (WHO) projects that cancer will overtake ischemic heart disease as the leading cause of death in the world.  Already, more than 70% of global cancer deaths occur in low and middle income countries and the cancer burden is rapidly increasing in these countries as infectious diseases are overcome and people live longer and take on more western lifestyles, especially with respect to smoking and diet.

Unfortunately, while governments across the globe are recognizing the increasing importance of cancer as a major health problem, health systems in low and middle income countries, which account for more than half of all new cancer cases in the world are, for the most part, inadequate to deal with the cancer burdens they face, and remain primarily adapted to dealing with infectious diseases.  Given this mounting crisis, INCTR has invited representatives from the WHO, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the International Union against Cancer (UICC) and the National Cancer Institute, USA, (NCI) as well as its program and branch directors from Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe and North America, to discuss its past successes and failures as well as future strategies for building capacity for cancer control.  In part, it is hoped that the meeting will stimulate increased communication and collaboration among the various organizations and academic institutions working to assist their colleagues in developing countries to more effectively address the problems they face.  In addition, strategies will be discussed for increasing the role of INCTR’s branches in national and regional activities, while improving access to national resources.   Working groups will discuss approaches to increasing the impact of existing programs and initiating new ones (for example, nursing and psychosocial care), while making maximal use of web-based approaches to identifying resources (such as Open Educational Resources for Cancer), providing consultations and education, monitoring scientific studies and improving communication among the various elements of INCTR.   In all, the meeting should provide a road-map for the future, based on past experience.

For more information about this meeting, contact:  cedric@inctr.be or bene@inctr.be