IARC Has published the results of a questionnaire survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on population-based cancer registries worldwide. They found that, in countries categorized with low Human Development Index (HDI), a greater number of registries reported a negative impact (81.3%) than in very high HDI countries (57.8%). In Africa, few of their respondents reported any disruption in registry staffing; conversely, the majority claimed a disruption of passive data collection resulting in a reduction in registrations.
To get more detail on the situation in sub Saharan Africa, we questioned the member registries of the African Cancer Registry Network (AFCRN) on any changes to registry practice in 2020, focussing on problems of staffing, travel and access to data sources (especially to hospital, pathology laboratories, and death certificates). Preliminary results suggest that the main problems related to travel (difficult during lockdown) and access to hospitals to collect data. In addition, in countries where the epidemic of Covid was acknowledged to be serious, hospital admissions for cancer had been curtailed.
Although the true incidence of cancer can be little affected by the epidemic occurrence of an infectious disease, it is known that problems in providing medical services for cancer patients impacts on the numbers of cases diagnosed (and registered). Disruptions to the collection by cancer registries of information on cases that are diagnosed can only make matters worse. We therefore studied the number of cases registered in 2020-2021 compared with the previous reporting period (2019-2020) to get a preliminary idea of the likely effects on reported incidence rates. The analysis is ongoing and full results will be presented during the AORTIC conference in November 2021.