The federal government says the proposed National Cancer Registry aimed at aiding the centralising cancer data in Nigeria is ninety per cent complete and will be ready in six months.

The director-general of the National Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment (NICRAT), Usman Aliyu, disclosed this on Tuesday in Abuja during a national workshop on Population-Based Cancer Registration.

The workshop was organised by NICRAT, the African Cancer Registry Network (ACRN), and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

Mr Aliyu said, “This is so that any time there is a need for information regarding cancer incidence, prevalence, morbidity and mortality. It will just be a click away. We are going to have a decentralised cancer registry in NICRAT like a kind of a dashboard, where on real time basis you can be having all information.

“If there is any increment in the incidence or mobility, morbidity and mortality, it will appear there. So the platform for the cancer registry is almost 90 per cent completed, so we are looking at within the span of five to six months to complete all the processes.”

Mr Aliyu also said that what was obtainable presently was a mix of key populations, but because of the large population of Nigerians, a more population-based cancer registry was more appropriate, which the agency was working on.

Maxwell Parkin, the coordinator of ACRN, said that cancer registries in Africa were important because they would provide all the information needed on what’s happening in the continent’s cancer space.

According to him, the network of cancer registries in Africa consists of only about 35 registers in 22 countries.

He, however, said that many things needed to be done to build a network of registers in Nigeria for many years.

Mr Parkin also said that the government’s involvement was very important because the registers help understand the nature of cancer problems, the priorities, and what needs to be done.

(NAN)