Strategic Plan for Cancer Control in Haiti
- Puts cervical cancer incidence in Haiti at about 93.9 per 100,000 with mortality at 53.5 per 100,000, and breast cancer incidence at 23.9 per 100,000 with mortality at 10.6, while stating that these figures probably underestimate the real burden considerably.
- Records the screening capacity behind that: only 15,000 to 17,000 cervical smears are performed a year, against a population of about 2.5 million women who are or will be aged 30 to 49.
- Characterizes Haitian breast tumours in molecular terms rather than by stage alone: BRCA 1/2 prevalence estimated at 8 percent among women diagnosed, with 55.9 percent estrogen receptor positive, 29.7 percent HER2 positive and 32.4 percent triple negative, and notes the low ER-positive and high triple-negative shares as distinctive.
- Records the WHO preface figures of 7,916 notified cancer cases in Haiti with 5,975 deaths a year.
- Notes that at least 50 percent of cancer cases are linked to modifiable risk factors, including insufficient fruit intake and insufficient physical activity, with an average 73 percent not eating enough fruit and vegetables.
- Records adult smoking prevalence as relatively low at 9.3 percent, which distinguishes Haiti's cancer risk profile from that of many comparators.
- Sets the global frame it works within, about 14 million new cases and more than 8 million deaths in 2012 rising to a projected 22 million cases, with more than 80 percent of cervical cancers occurring in low- and middle-income countries.
This plan positions cancer as an emerging public-health problem in Haiti rather than a marginal one. Its preface sets out the case: cancer is becoming a global health problem with a projection of some 22 million cases by 2030; cervical cancer is preventable yet a cause of morbidity and mortality among women worldwide, of which Haiti is a clear instance; the World Health Organization estimates 7,916 notified cancer cases in Haiti with 5,975 deaths annually. Two features of the Haitian picture drive the strategy - that those affected are generally seen only at an advanced stage of their disease, and that women are concerned in more than half of cases, with children not spared. The document then sets out the strategic response. It is short at seventeen pages and is best read as a framing and priority-setting document rather than a costed program. It is the only cancer-specific national strategy located in the sweep, and the corpus held no non-communicable-disease strategy before this batch.
How to cite
Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP), 2017, Strategic Plan for Cancer Control in Haiti, https://oldwebsite.mspp.gouv.ht/wp-content/uploads/Plan-strategique-national-pour-cancer-en-Haiti.pdf