Cancer incidence in eastern Morocco: cancer patterns and incidence trends, 2005–2012

Abstract

BackgroundCancer is one of the major health problems worldwide. In this article, we present for the first time the cancer incidence trends, the distribution and the socioeconomic profile of incident cancer cases in Eastern Morocco over a period of eight years.MethodsRetrospective descriptive study of patients diagnosed with cancer at the Hassan II Regional Oncology Center (ROC) since it was created in October 2005 until December 2012. During the study period, the ROC was the only hospital specialized in cancer care in Eastern Morocco.ResultsA total of 7872 incident cases of cancer were registered in Eastern Morocco. Among these incident cases 5220 cases were women and 2652 were men, with a female to male ratio of 1.97. The mean age at diagnosis was 58 years for males and 52 for females and 94% of the patients aged over 30 years. For both sexes combined and for all cancer sites, breast cancer was the commonest followed by cervix uteri, colon-rectum, lung, nasopharynx, and stomach cancers. The most common cancer in women was breast cancer, followed respectively by cervix uteri cancer, colon-rectum cancer, ovary cancer, and stomach cancer. In men, the lung cancer ranked first, followed respectively by colon-rectum cancer, nasopharynx cancer, prostate cancer, and stomach cancer. For most cancers, crude incidence rates (CR) have increased significantly. The CR for all cancers combined has increased from 56.6 to 80.3 per 100,000 females and from 32.3 to 42.6 per 100,000 males during the study period. Patients profile analysis showed that 79% of cancer patients were from urban areas, 83% were unemployed and 85% had no health insurance.ConclusionsThe distribution of cancers in Eastern Morocco is different from those observed in other regions of Morocco. Unlike most countries, women were much more affected with cancer than men in Eastern Morocco. More importantly, the rates of many cancers are rising. Therefore, our data justify the need to develop effective programs for cancer control and prevention in Eastern Morocco. A better access to cancer care should be a priority of the health policies, given that the majority of cancer patients in Eastern Morocco are unemployed, and do not have medical care coverage.

Practice of Oncology in Low- income Setting: A Review of Four Years Activities in Togo

“…In our study, the mean age of patients was slightly higher in men (53.48 years) than in women (52.39 years). The same results have been reported in several studies [10,11,14,15].…”

“…The majority of patients in the study were female. This feminine predominance has already been reported in Togolese patients by Amégbor [7] and has also been observed in other studies in Africa [9,12,15]. This can be explained by the large proportion of breast and cervix cancer in our patients.…”

Premature mortality attributable to smoking among Tunisian men in 2009

“…In comparison, in Eastern Morocco, lung cancer ranked the fourth most common cancer, accounting for 7.5% of total cancers and the most frequent malignancy with 19% of male cancers 29 . In Algeria, lung cancer is the sixth most common type of cancer (2.8%), and it is the most prevalent cancer in males representing 19.9% of cases 30 .…”

Clustering time trends of breast cancer incidence in Africa: a 27-year longitudinal study in 53 countries

“…Khalis et al showed that BC incidence increased from 35 to 39 per 100000 women during 2004 to 2008 in Morocco 5. Another study which was done at the eastern morocco announced BC incidence was increased from 23 to 36.8 between 2006–2012 because of some reasons like late age of marriage, reducing fertility, change in diet, physical activity and change in prevalence of protective factors like age at the first child delivery and duration of breast feeding 17 , 18 . The incidence of BC was increased in Tunisia from 23.4 to 28.3 per 100000 that showed annual increase of 2.2% from 1993 to 2006.…”