We had a very interesting and interactive session that was part of the UICC regional meeting in Africa. The topic was challenging and definitely we tried to use this as an opportunity to interact with the audience. The topic that we did choose for this session was implementing the best practices in cancer control in Africa. It sounds extremely interesting and we had quite a number of people coming not only from many countries from Africa but from many other countries all over the world.
The session started by two presentations of two of my colleagues, one was the role of cancer research in Africa and the second one was the role of partnerships. From there the dialogue began. We tried to define what are the best practices, we needed to make sure that the definition of best practices is the same for all of us, so not only, obviously, the definition from Google but what each of us understands by best practices. Then we continued discussing about comparing the best practices in the world with the best practices in Africa. So are best practices the same, best practices in cancer control in Africa the same as best practices in the world? Then obviously the discussion went one step further, looking at the differences which exist between best practices in different African countries. So we had a lot of debate.
Could you tell us about some of these discussions?
Some of the discussions related to the subject were mainly concerning, again, how do we measure the best practices. Something that we could define as best practice today might not be the best practice tomorrow because there will be other better interventions. Again, what is applicable to one country might not be applicable to another country. So again, we argued – do we talk about best practices or do we talk about essential practices, and we took an example – do we screen? Screening, everybody talks about screening for different types of cancer, we know how efficient, how effective screening can be. The question which was raised was do we screen in Africa, yes or no? Then perhaps we went into a more philosophical debate, yes we do screen or we should screen, but should we screen in the same way as we screen in other countries or should we perhaps develop our own guidelines or rules, again, depending on our needs and depending on our resources.
You mentioned that the audience was comprised of people from Africa and elsewhere?
Yes, we had quite a number of representatives from African countries such as Nigeria. The previous President of AORTIC is now the Minister of Health of Nigeria so that was again quite challenging, what are the best practices for cancer control in Nigeria. Then we had representatives from Senegal, from Ghana, from Zimbabwe, from Congo, from Tanzania, from Rwanda so that is just to mention a number. Then it was extremely interesting to see that it was an African regional meeting but Africa is not just Africa, Africa now includes the world. So we had really colleagues from the United States, quite a number of them, we had representatives from the National Cancer Institute, we had colleagues from the World Bank, we had colleagues from Canada, we had colleagues from everywhere. So we are talking now really not about AORTIC just an African family as our family is getting bigger and bigger by the day. So we were extremely happy to see the interest which the session caused.
How did this influence the discussion in regards to best practices in different places?
Obviously we had different types of questions. One of them was one colleague from Rwanda who was asking how can AORTIC support or how can AORTIC help in terms of implementing the best practices in cancer control, let’s say, in Rwanda or what can AORTIC do for them. Then the answer is extremely simple because AORTIC is basically you and me and him and her and everybody else so it’s up to us the way of how we want to make that work. AORTIC stands as the organisation for all to be able to come and to work together so we tried to use this opportunity basically for a brainstorming session more than anything else.
Were there any other articles up for debate?
Yes, obviously we discussed a lot about should we talk about essential practices, should we talk about best practices, should we talk about promising, the most promising, practices, not applicable practices and the two different examples such as breast cancer, what should we do in terms of priorities, childhood cancer? Then we talked of course about the most common breast and cervical cancer then obviously the male audience wanted a little bit more attention in terms of the male cancers such as prostate which doesn’t always appear as a dedicated session. We had colleagues again from Nigeria who raised the question about rare cancers such as osteosarcoma or sarcomas which are quite common in Africa but perhaps they don’t get the same attention as the other types of cancer. We discussed about the role of registries, and again we don’t know exactly the number, we discussed about the cost, about the way of how we could partner not only with other countries but how could we make it work in terms of private government partnership too. So we were looking really for some new ideas, I would say, some new innovative ideas in order to be able to implement these practices.
How do we take these discussions forward?
What we have decided was basically to… obviously one and a half hours was not enough, it was just to let us get excited and think and come with new ideas. So we decided for the next AORTIC, which is going to be in 2017 in November, we don’t know yet in which African country, but this is going to be determined soon, we are going to dedicate quite a long session where we would have different working groups looking at different practices in different countries. So we will discuss about what is applicable in different countries, how do we measure, how do we know that we are successful, what is the best way to do, what works and what doesn’t. So lessons which we could learn from each other.
