Author's reply to: Lung cancer mortality in sub-Saharan Africa

✍ Scribed by Jacques Ferlay; Hai-Rim Shin; Freddie Bray; David Forman; Colin Mathers; Donald Maxwell Parkin

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 245 KB
• Volume: 129
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7136
• DOI: 10.1002/ijc.25805

✦ Synopsis

In a recent paper in the IJC, 1 Ferlay et al. report on the results of the latest update of GLOBOCAN, released on 1st June 2010 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. 2 GLOBOCAN 2008 is an important resource for cancer research and health policy. Mortality and incidence estimates of crude rates, age-standardized rates and absolute number of cases by country and sex for the year 2008 are provided. We agree with their conclusion that ''Already the majority of the global cancer burden now occurs in developing countries, these proportions will rise in the next decades if rates remain unchanged.'' Given the demographic transition that is ongoing in developing countries, the absolute numbers will almost certainly rise in the future.

In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), population-based data on lung cancer incidence or mortality are not available, except South Africa and smaller island states. GLOBOCAN uses Figure 1. Map of estimated age-adjusted lung cancer mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa by sex according to GLOBOCAN and our method.