DDuring this day, national experts presented the latest epidemiological data on cancer in Morocco, recalling that it remains a public health problem and alerting to the steady increase in the number of cases which today exceeds 50,000 per year. in Morocco. Cancer is thus one of the main causes of premature mortality, with an increasing incidence for the majority of cancers.
The speakers also underlined the enormous efforts and progress made in the fight against cancer in Morocco over the past ten years, both in terms of the development at the national level of specialized public and private hospital infrastructures, and the rapid increase in the number reference centers for cancer screening throughout Morocco, the number and sophistication of equipment, easy access to care and treatment, the gradual establishment of palliative care units, and the development of research.
Indeed, the National Cancer Prevention and Control Plans 2010-2019 and 2020-2029, set up within the framework of a strategic partnership between the Ministry of Health and Social Protection and the Lalla Salma Foundation, n could have been developed without the data collected by the Grand-Casablanca Cancer Registry.
“Epidemiological surveillance, via the population cancer registry, is one of the pillars of the fight against cancer. It plays a unique role in controlling disease in a population. And allows decision-makers to prepare for the future in terms of healthcare provision. The Registry remains the backbone of the fight against cancer,” said Pr. Abdelatif Benider, president of the AMRC.
The speakers of this 1st day thus insisted on the importance of the reliability of the data collected, closely linked to the data collection and management process. AMRC explained the issues and appealed to all stakeholders: public hospitals, private clinics, public and private pathology laboratories and mortality services.
Indeed, in order to be able to improve epidemiological data, it is also crucial to be able to integrate mortality data in the future, hence the importance of the work currently being carried out, aimed at strengthening the recording of the causes of death in Morocco. as Jamila El Mendili, head of the studies and health information department at the Ministry of Health, explained.
To make data collection and analysis more reliable, the future Information System (IS) dedicated to the Registry and inspired by the hospital IS (SIH) deployed in public oncology centers in the Kingdom, was presented to the participants by Soumaya Fatemi , project manager at the Lalla Salma Foundation. Through digitization, it will make it possible to cover the entire process globally, to make the register data as reliable as possible, while gaining in speed, by eliminating the slow and tedious cross-checking of information from multiple sources and concerning an ever-increasing number of files to be process each year.
In conclusion of this 1st day of the Cancer Registry, Professor Abdelkader Acharki, treasurer of the AMRC, encouraged the generalization of data collection to provide Morocco with a high quality Registry with data available and accessible to any time ; high-quality, complete, accurate and consistent data returned on time, i.e. every two years.
An objective that cannot be achieved without the active participation of the public sector but also of the private sector, an essential and indispensable part of oncology in Morocco. A call to all the active forces present summarized by the slogan of this 1st day devoted to the cancer registry: We all have a role to play.