Planning cancer prevention strategies based on epidemiologic characteristics: an Egyptian example

We describe the epidemiology, cancer prevention strategies, and educational messages to be learned from four characteristic cancers in Egypt: urinary bladder, liver, lung, and early-onset colorectal cancers.

For bladder cancer, effective and convenient treatment of schistosomiasis, using social marketing and mass media in public and medical education has contributed dramatically to primary prevention of bladder cancer in Egypt. For liver cancer, educating hospital administrators to remove structural barriers to good practice may help the control of hepatitis transmission and related liver cancer. For lung cancer, the 50-year American experience for controlling tobacco smoking, beginning with physicians, could be very effective in Egypt and other countries with increasing smoking rates in the young so as to avert the expected epidemics of lung cancer. For colorectal cancer, more attention to physician and public education about the importance of interviewing colorectal cancer patients about a family history of cancer and the screening of at-risk families could be very effective in early detection of colorectal cancer.

Countries with similar cancer epidemiology experience should make use of successful cancer prevention and education strategies that could be translated from the Egyptian experience.