By Audrey Dekalu, GNA special Correspondent, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Dar es Salaam, Nov. 12, GNA - Tanzanian President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete has called on African leaders to include cancer prevention in their health policy and form partnerships to help shape the cancer control agenda in Africa.

Cancer, he said, was killing more people in the developing world than HIV and AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined and that if Africa did not set its priorities right its effects would be devastating. In a speech read on his behalf by the Health Minister of Tanzania, Professor David Homeli Mwakyusa at the Seventh African Organisation for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, he said his government was committed to investing in cancer prevention and control in order to make his country one in Africa with a low cancer burden. AORTIC is an African based non-governmental organization dedicated to the promotion of cancer control, diagnosis, treatment and palliation in Africa.

Over 700 delegates from Anglophone and Francophone countries in Africa are attending the conference which is on the theme, Cancer in Africa-The New Reality, is expected to provide invaluable tools. The meeting is to stem the tide of the pandemic with key terms that address the full cancer control continuum including cancer treatment, research and capacity building.

The conference would also highlight the important roles of advocacy, prevention including tobacco control, supportive care and palliative care in the fight against the pandemic.

The Tanzanian President said cancer was emerging as a major health problem in middle and low income countries where 70 percent of all cancer deaths are expected to occur.

He called for a coordinated, comprehensive and responsive control programme through human resource development, prevention, early detection, treatment and palliative care to reduce the cancer incidence, morbidity and mortality for the people of the region.

The Chief Medical Officer of the American Cancer Society, Dr. Otis Brawley, described the global cancer burden as a public health paradox because though it was largely preventable and highly treatable when detected early it was expected to be the leading cause of death world wide by 2010. He said in 2007 there were an estimated 12 million new cancer cases and 7.6 million deaths globally and this was expected to increase to 27 million new cases and 17.5 million deaths globally in the developing world. He said the fight could only be effective if cancer was given priority at the highest decision-making levels and prominently positioned on Africa's health agenda.

The global cancer scourge was impacting on nations of the world in diverse ways, and the truth was clear, he said, and added that "if we do not act quickly, collectively and decisively, the toll on our society would be devastating".

Mr. Christopher Wild, Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, praised the vital role of AORTIC and called for a broader activity which compasses cancer prevention to match the effort in improving clinical care because only with that combined approach will the fight be successful in reducing the cancer burden.

A professor of Medicine and Human Genetics, University of Chicago, Prof Olufumilayo Olapade, said Africa could follow the examples of the developed counties but was quick to add that Africa needed to go for home grown solutions and not to duplicate in its entirety, the solutions of other countries.