The My Child Matters program is part of the International Union Against Cancer’s (UICC) campaign and is dedicated to improving information dissemination about cancer in children to health professionals and the general public, to improve early diagnosis and access to care, and to support children with cancer and their families in the developing world. The first report from the My Child Matters program, published in the August edition of The Lancet Oncology, found that low- and middle-income countries still have poor pediatric cancer survival rates. The descriptive study also found that the level of pediatric cancer care and available resources is highly variable between countries.
This first report from the program focuses on data collected between Sept 5, 2005 and May 26, 2006. Prof Raul Ribeiro (St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, USA) and colleagues studied pediatric oncology care and 5-year survival in ten countries that received support from My Child Matters. These low- to middle-income countries included:
- Bangladesh
- Egypt
- Honduras
- Morocco
- The Philippines
- Senegal
- Tanzania
- Ukraine
- Venezuela
- Vietnam
The researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with clinicians, hospital managers, health officials, and other health-care professionals in order to gather data on several important elements of pediatric care and to gather baseline survival data for use in future comparative studies. They focused on the availability of national pediatric cancer programs, hospital units dedicated to pediatric cancer, tools for diagnostic work, and drugs to fight cancer as well as antibiotics. The data were also compared with national incidence data for pediatric cancer acquired from the population-based registries in order to make sure that the survey provided accurate and relevant data. The survey data were also correlated with variables that described demographic, health, and socioeconomic factors derived from global health organizations.
One conclusion of the study was that between countries, there was a large variation in pediatric oncology care. Additionally, there often was no agreement between the number of patients reported receiving medical care in the program survey and the official number predicted by the population-based incidence data. In 70% of the countries, the authors labeled the access to pediatric care or management as extremely poor. Five-year survival rates were estimated to be:
- 5% to 10% in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Senegal, Tanzania, and Vietnam
- 30% in Morocco
- 40% to 60% in Egypt, Honduras, the Ukraine, and Venezuela
Correlations demonstrated that survival varies directly with several variables including: per capita annual total health-care expenditure, per capita gross domestic product, per capita gross national income, number of physicians and nurses per 1000 population, and annual government health-care expenditure per capita.
“Detailed surveys can provide useful data for baseline assessment of the status of paediatric oncology, but cannot substitute for national cancer registration. Alliances between public, private, and international agencies might rapidly improve the outcome of children with cancer in these countries,” conclude the researchers.
Baseline status of paediatric oncology care in ten low-income or mid-income countries receiving My Child Matters support: a descriptive study
Raul C Ribeiro, Eva Steliarova-Foucher, Ian Magrath, Jean Lemerle, Tim Eden, Caty Forget, Isabel Mortara, Isabelle Tabah-Fisch, Jose Julio Divino, Thomas Miklavec, Scott C Howard, Franco Cavalli
The Lancet Oncology (2008). Vol 9: pp. 721-9.
Written by: Peter M Crosta