33rd Annual Scientific Conference
11-13 October 2011, Balaclava, Mauritius
Cancer : countries in transition
The 33rd Annual Meeting was held in the lovely settings of Balaclava, Mauritius, from 11 to 13 October 2011.
The venue had been chosen to give the opportunity to cancer registries from the African region to attend and discuss issues specific to the region. Mauritius is known as a tourist destination but has a significant burden of non-communicable diseases. Cancer has become an important public health issue here and in other African countries, partly due to the lifestyle and environmental changes now being experienced.
The main theme of the meeting was, appropriately, Cancer: countries in transition.
IACR was greatly honoured that the opening ceremony was held in the presence of the Hon. Navinchandra Ramgoolam, Prime Minister of the Republic of Mauritius and the Hon. Lormus Bundhoo,Minister of Health & Quality of Life.
162 participants from over 60 countries attended the meeting, mainly from Africa (48), but also Asia (46) Europe (42), North America (18), South America (7) and Oceania (1). From the 149 abstracts submitted, 37 had been selected for oral presentations and 84 for poster presentations.
The following speakers provided state of the art keynote presentations:
Dr Joe Harford (USA): “Population-based cancer registries – why bother?”
Prof. Prabhat Jha (Canada): “Tobacco deaths (avoidable) and taxes (unavoidable)”
Dr Shyam Manraj (Mauritius): “Cancer registration in Mauritius
Prof. Jean-Marc Nabholtz (France): “Development of cancer care in countries in transition: what are the fundamental factors applicable to breast cancer?”
Dr Rob Newton (UK): “Infections and cancer – a contribution of Africa”
Dr Rengswamy Sankaranarayanan (IARC): “Cancer screening in developing countries”
Dr Christopher Wild (IARC): “Liver cancer: global burden, causes and prevention”
The Closing Ceremony included the award for the best posters, conferred to Sivagurunathan Balasubramanian (India), Yuri Ito (Japan) and Diego Silva (Brazil), and a special mention to Eero Pukkala (Finland) and Evlina Sinuraya (Indonesia) for their posters. This was followed by a presentation of the 2012 meeting by HarryComber (Ireland) and the Enrico Anglesio Prize Award.
THE ENRICO ANGLESIO PRIZE
The second prize was awarded to Mugi Wahidin from Jakarta (Indonesia) for his presentation of the study: "Method of Population-Based Cancer Registry in Indonesia".
The social events included a welcome reception on the Fountain Lawn in the grounds of the InterContinental Hotel and participants were the guests of the Minister of Health for the Gala dinner, where they were entertained by delightful Mauritian dancers.
Related events:
On 10 October, Dr Freddie Bray (IARC) and Prof. Henrik Moller (UK) led a training course on “Examining existing time trends and making predictions on time trends” (19 participants) and Mr Morten Ervik (IARC) ran a workshop on CanReg5: a practical guide to its use (25 participants).
The Executive Board Meeting took place, also on 10 October. Issues discussed at the meeting were reported at the Business Meeting, which was held on 13 October and some are summarised in this Newsletter.
A Regional Network Meeting of the African Association of Cancer Registries was held on 14 October at the University of Mauritius. This included presentations from countries in Africa and the Indian Ocean region, and a meeting of the regional network.
