KARACHI, Feb 5: Pakistan is doing without a registry with the help of which it could keep abreast of trends in the spread, or otherwise, of cancer. Until the country gets a proper registry, its physicians and surgeons will not get reliable data which are needed for properly planning anti-cancer initiatives.

Work on a registry was started in 1999 on the advice of the International Agency for Cancer Research, said two senior doctors.

It had initially been proposed that a cancer registry be developed for the hospitals and patients of the now-defunct District South, said Dr Rehana Mehar of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre on Wednesday.

“So work on a registry for this district got under way in 1999,” she said. Originally it had been decided that after the relevant staff in this district got trained adequately in maintaining a registry, work on one of the other districts would be undertaken.

“This way we were supposed to get a new registry in Karachi after a couple of years or so. However, after the setting up of a registry in District South, further work has been discontinued.”

As a result all the time, money and effort invested in the registry work has gone to waste, she said. “And of course our planners, in the absence of reliable data, continue to shoot in the dark.”

She commented that even a poor country like Rwanda had a national tumour registry.

During a presentation last week at the Aga Khan University Hospital its chief of general surgery, Prof Shaista Khan, had also called for a registry. “We badly need a national tumour registry,” she said.

She said the country needed to gear up its resources to combat cancer because up to seven million Pakistanis suffered from it.

Prof Khan was of the view that since treatment of cancer was very expensive, organized efforts must be undertaken to combat it. The prevalence of smoking was rising among the people, which is a leading cause of cancer.

Disease burden was considerable, said Prof Khan. “Up to 12,000 new cases are detected in Karachi every year.”

Both Dr Rehana Mehar and Prof Shaista Khan said early detection of cancer was imperative. To achieve this goal widespread awareness about the symptoms of cancer, and also the causes, was needed, they said.

A senior doctor told Dawn that work on a national registry need not be an expensive proposition. “All the oncology departments of the hospitals need to coordinate their data. I don’t think this should be a costly affair.”