Background The GNCR was established in 1986 to record data on the pattern of cancer occurrence in The Gambia. It is remarkable amongst cancer registries in Africa in achieving a broad coverage, including a substantial proportion of the rural population, thus providing an unbiased description of the cancer profile in the population and an unparalleled opportunity to study cancer occurrence and outcome in a low-income country in sub-Saharan -Africa.
Impact Population-based cancer registries such as the GNCR play a key role in cancer control by providing the means to plan, monitor and evaluate the impact of specific interventions. The data generated by the GNCR demonstrated just how prevalent liver cancer is in this region and stimulated a substantial number of additional research collaborations on liver and other cancers of importance in the population. These included extensive investigations of the role of aflatoxin and its interaction with HBV infection in the etiology of liver cancer and, more recently, studies on breast cancer.
The high coverage and quality of the data from the GNCR also permitted one of the rare studies of cancer survival in an African population, showing just how poor the outcomes were compared to high-resource countries.
Conclusion The GNCR is a model of how investment in the cancer registry infrastructure, aimed at collecting quality data on cancer in low- and medium income countries, provides not only vital information on the cancer burden but also stimulates fresh ideas to investigate the causes and prevention of the common cancers in a region.
Provided by the International Agency for Research on Cancer