Monitoring cancer incidence and risk factors in Singapore

In the development of a national cancer control programme, the cancer registry can play a pivotal role by providing useful data for planning and evaluation of curative and preventive services. Having produced information on cancer incidence patterns, the Singapore registry is now able to analyse incidence trends among the Chinese population based on the first 15 years of data (1968-1982). Increases in incidence are reported for all sites (at average annual rate of 0.4%), lung (2.2%), colon (3.0%), rectum (3.1%), skin (3.2%), prostate (4.9%) and bladder (2.3%) in males; for all sites (1.3%), lung (2.4%), colon (5.0%), rectum (4.1%), skin (3.9%), breast (3.2%) and ovary (3.4%) in females. Marked decreases are reported for oesophagus (3.9% in males, 5.8% in females) and stomach (2.2%) in males and 1.4% in females). No significant changes are seen in nasopharynx, liver (both sexes) and cervix. Some of the associated changes in risk factor prevalence are discussed in relation to the main cancer sites.