Cancer centre lacks data

 THE National Cancer Treatment Centre in Lae does not have any statistic of cancer patients because there is no registrar to keep records, radiation oncologist Dr John Niblet says.

He said new cancer patients visiting the department for treatment was between 200 and 300 per year. 

These are the referral cases which had already been assessed elsewhere and needing specialist treatment.

“This does not reflect the total number of cancer patients throughout the year at different hospitals,” Niblet said.

He said they used have a cancer registry in 70s and 80s in the Pathology department in Port Moresby. Lack of staff led to its demise.

Niblet said the centre failed to accurately keep track of cases in the country.

“We guess that there are 10,000 cancer patients a year around the country. Some of them do not come to the hospitals and die in the village,” he said. Niblet said they treated between 100 and 150 cases of cervix cancer a year.

“The majority of those cases are stage three – which means they are advanced and when you meet them, they do not look very sick but the sickness was at its peak stage,” Niblet said.