On February 4, ASCP is joining with 1100 organizations around the globe to raise awareness about cancer, one of the world’s primary killers, especially in under-resourced countries.
World Cancer Day—organized by the Union for International Cancer Control—unites cancer patients, survivors, healthcare professionals and organizations in their quest to encourage governments and individuals to take action, large and small, against the disease.
In 2018, there were an estimated 18.1 million new cancer cases and 9.6 million cancer deaths, according to GLOBOCAN 2018 estimates of cancer incidence and mortality produced by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.1
ASCP and our volunteers have been a part of the global fight against cancer for many years. Below are a few examples of our efforts.
- ASCP Chief Medical Officer Dan A. Milner, Jr., MD, MSc(Epi), FASCP, and 40 other invited experts, are attending a summit on Monday, Feb. 3, and Tuesday, Feb. 4, at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, to discuss the concept of a Universal Cancer Screening test from a variety of perspectives, including the global health context.
- ASCP is collaborating with Seattle-based BIO Ventures for Global Health to build the cancer diagnostic capacity in Northern Nigeria. Both organizations have offered histology training workshops to pathologists and histologists from 10 hospitals throughout the northern region with the goal to improve the efficiency and throughput of the pathology laboratory and the technical capacity of pathology laboratory staff.
- The Society is training laboratory technologist supervisors from rural and town settings across Sierra Leone and Liberia.
- ASCP leaders are working with Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) to expand and improve the quality of cancer and HIV/AIDS care in resource-limited countries. Project ECHO programs use a hub-and-spoke model to connect primary care providers in remote areas access with the tools, resources, peer support and specialist consults they need to improve care management for their patients. Specialists at the “hub” site meet regularly with healthcare professionals in local communities via video conferencing, and the “spoke” sites learn from each other by presenting cases and sharing experiences.
- ASCP’s Center for Global Health is collaborating with Novartis and the American Cancer Society to improve access to cancer treatment in several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia and Malawi. The goal is to provide earlier and more effective diagnoses to cancer patients, improving the likelihood for better health outcomes. As a part of this collaboration, ASCP has been building healthcare capacity for immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis in seven hospital laboratories, as IHC is required for oncologists to treat many cancers.
“ASCP is pleased to join with the UICC on World Cancer Day to raise awareness of the importance of improving access to quality cancer diagnostics and treatment,” said Dr. Milner.
References
- American Cancer Society. Global Cancer Statistics 2018: GLOBOCAN Estimates of Incidence and Mortality Worldwide for 36 Cancers in 185 countries. https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.3322/caac.21492. Accessed Jan. 29, 2020.
