Improving Quality of Cancer Registration in Iran. Part2: Suggesting New National Cancer Registration Program in Iran, Based on Comparative Study of 18 Countries

Previous evaluations revealed that cancer registration in Iran is not functioning appropriately and a reform is needed. We evaluated cancer registries in 18 countries and suggested a new cancer registration system for Iran.

We compared information from Iranian cancer registry with the same information from selected countries with a population size more than 10 million that their cancer registration data were published by International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Moreover, we studied trends in the number of registration centers, from establishment of their first center up to 1997. Finally we suggested a new program for establishment of a national cancer registration system in Iran.

On average, geographical coverage of cancer registries was 24.6% in these countries. They all had population-based cancer registration system. Overall, every ten years, 3 cancer registry centers were added in all the mentioned countries together.

Instead of pathology-based cancer registry, we should promote establishment of population-based cancer registries in Iran. Given limited resources available, coverage of 25-30 percent of the country by cancer registry would be sufficient to produce national cancer incidence data. We suggest promoting population-based cancer registry in Fars, Tehran, Golestan and Ardabil provinces and try our best to provide qualified data from these regions before extending the registration activities to other regions.