Cancer: The Growing Monster in Egypt

Abstract

Short communication The magnitude of the cancer problem remained unknown until very recently when Egypt national cancer registry program published its results in 2014, after 10years of population-based registration. 1 The published incidence data replaced the hospital-based proportions that wouldn't help to estimate magnitude of the problem. 2 The estimated crude incidence of cancer for 2013 was 115.7/100,000 males and 11o.3/100,000 females. The estimated incident cases were 114,985 in 2013. Assuming that the age specific incidence rates would not change up to 2050; the number of incident cases would increase to 341,169 due to population growth by 160% and aging of the population as shown in the corresponding population pyramids. The main cause of increase was attributed to demographic change rather than population growth. This 3-fold increase varied by site of tumor as shown in the table above. For the most common sites, increase in prostate cancer was highest for prostate cancer (424%) and lowest for breast cancer (253%). This expected increase by site would be reflected on control activities for early detection of breast and other cancers. Control of