Registry

The cancer registry of Guinea was established in 1990 and is located in the Department of Pathology at the National Hospital of Donka, Conakry. It aims to be population based for the city of Conakry. A six-month duration of stay is used as the criterion to distinguish cancer patients who are usual residents of the city from temporary visitors (cases domiciled with their families for the purpose of receiving medical care).

Director- contact details

Dr Moussa Koulibaly

Registre de Cancer de Guinée
Centre National d'Anatomie Pathologique
Faculté de Médecine/Pharmacie
Université de Conakry, B.P. 4152
Conakry

The Registry Director provides overall supervision, but the work of registration is all carried out by the registry manager, Mr Ibrahim Kabba.

Left to right: Dr Bangaly Traoré (Clinical consultant), Mr Ibrahim Kabba (Cancer Registrar), Prof Moussa Koulibaly (Registry Director)

 

 

 

Registry population

The last census of the population was in 1996, at which time the population of the city was 1.09 million.

 

Sources of information for the registry

The main sources are the Hôpital National de Donka (which has all specialities, including oncological surgery), the Hôpital National Ignace Deen (471 beds - all specialities), and, since April, the Hôpital Amitié Sino-Guinéen (Kipé), which has 120 beds, and includes services such as surgery and neurosurgery. Data are also collected from four community hospitals and several private clinics. There is little specialised oncology in Guinée, apart from a department of Oncological Surgery and Gynaecological Oncology in Hôpital de Donka. There is no service of radiotherapy in the country – patients are sent to Dakar for treatment. There are 2 laboratories of pathology in the city (Hôpital  de Donka and  Hôpital Amitié Sino-Guinéen). The former is a major source of information for the registry;  data on cancer cases are retrieved from the request form, onto which the diagnosis has been written.

There is no civil registration of death that entails certification of cause of death.

The registration form is shown as Annex 1.

Methods of registration

Case finding is entirely active, by medical students, as part of their course work (preparation of mini-theses). They visit the clinical services expected to generate cancer cases, and collect the information onto a Registration Form (Annex). None of the hospitals have central records departments. Medical records are kept in each service, although these may also have registers of admissions/discharges, with a simple diagnosis for each.

 

Data management

The registry uses the CANREG-4 system for data entry and management

 

 

Data analysis/results

The early results, for 1992-1995 were published in  1997 (Koulibaly M, Kabba IS, Cisse A, Diallo SB, Diallo MB, Keita N, Camara ND, Diallo MS, Sylla BS & Parkin DM(1 997) Cancer incidence in Conakry, Guinea: first results from the Cancer Registry 1992-1 995. Int. J. Cancer, 70, 3945) and for 1996-1999 in the book « Cancer in Africa »

 

Recent results

For the period 2006-2010 a total of 3146 cases were registered, including 1949 among the residents of Conakry. 71% of the cases registered had a diagnosis based on histology or cytology.

The pie charts show the most frequently registered cancers in males and females

The most commonly registered cancers. Conakry 2006-2010