Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) for cancer research has acquired a new role by turning into an international cancer registry hub for the Asian region, taking in 31 countries under its wing.

TMH a training hub for Asia

The Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) for cancer research has acquired a new role by turning into an international cancer registry hub for the Asian region, taking in 31 countries under its wing. Located on the 13th floor of the hospital’s Homi Bhabha block, the swank new regional hub has been set up in cooperation with World Health Organisation’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). “With more than Rs50-lakh investment, IARC along with TMH is looking at training the staff of Asian countries for establishing cancer registries through the IARC regional hub at TMH. Three more regional hubs in Turkey, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America are in the pipeline,” said Dr Christopher Wild, director, IARC. Despite the fact that the cancer burden in the low- and middle-income countries is the highest, it is alarming that countries like Nepal, Mongolia, Bangladesh and Bhutan do not have a single cancer registry hub to study the data of the disease occurrence. “The regional hub will provide training and support to set up cancer registries in south central, south eastern and east Asian countries which do not have one,” said Dr Rajesh Dikshit, principal investigator, IARC regional hub at TMH. “The regional hub at TMC will be a one-point contact between registries in Asia for establishing quality control in cancer data analysis to match international standards,” he added. With one of the oldest cancer registries running since 1962 at TMH, doctors said the hospital was an apt place to initiate the global initiative for cancer registry development. Doctors at TMH will rope in technical expertise from city-based International Institute of Population Sciences for estimating cancer rates over the next 25 years in population clusters.