Statistics...

Whilst in the department the staff gave me statistical information for between 2006 - 2012 about the country and different regions and the variation between the different regions is vastly different, let alone compared with the UK.

Cervical Cancer is the most common cancer (as already known), with 955 cases being treated in '06 rising to 1896 in '12. Patients treated for Prostate cancer in '06 was just 51 and last year 101 were treated. The incidence of Kaposi's Sarcoma and other skin cancers is quite different, Kaposi patients treated last year were 789 and for other skin cancers 147 were treated.

Breast Cancer - 667
Oesophagus - 573
Head and Neck - 386
Lymphoma - 295
Leukemia - 252
Bladder - 168
Eye - 131
(As of 2012)

These relate to the type of cancers I saw and the quanitites I saw them in too.

The number of these patients that came from Dar es Salaam was nearly 10,000, from other regions less than 1,000 were treated. This is as Dar holds the only radiotherapy centre, it is hard for most people to travel this distance; especially if they live in Arusha which is at the northern end of the country. The region of Manyara has the lowest number of patients being treated with cancer.

These statistics don't really have a baring on how many people with cancer there actually are in Tanzania, as most people probably ignore their illnesses anyway. A couple of the staff that I talked to were very keen on travelling around to the different regions and educating their people on their health and cancer. There are lots of things that the staff would love to do to help their people, like creating a charity for those patients they have to help them with travel, food, expenses, etc. - which is lovely, but they are finding it hard to start as they need to get sponsors first.