Tata Memorial Centre (TMC) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer recently inaugurated the first IARC Regional Hub for Cancer Registration at the new facilities in the Homi Bhabha block of the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai. The plaque was unveiled by Dr CP Wild, Director of IARC, together with Dr RA Badwe, Director of TMC. Dr A Garg, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare in India, Dr PK Singh, Deputy Regional Director of the South East Asia Regional Office, and Dr P Rajaraman, Director of South Asia Programs, Center for Global Health, US NCI, based in Delhi were some of the people who attended the ceremony. The Mumbai hub will offer the needed support, training, advocacy and research opportunities to cancer registries across 30 countries in South Central, South Eastern and South Asia.
The hub operations will be expanding programme of direct assistance to registries in the region via collaborative agreements with IARC. Initially, three registries in Indonesia, Mongolia and Sri Lanka are being targetted for improved training and support in order to raise the profile of their registration activities in the context of national cancer control planning. The Mumbai hub at TMC will serve as a local resource centre to offer developmental support towards, and for, population-based cancer registration in defined world regions, as part of the ‘Global Initiative for Cancer Registry Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries’.
A second hub located in Izmir, Turkey will be established in December 2012, to assist cancer registries in 27 countries of Northern Africa and Western Asia.
EH News Bureau