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Jamaica to enhance cancer data tracking with new software

Published:Friday | October 27, 2023 | 12:06 AM
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Minister of Health & Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton examines the Project Commitment Letter presented by Dr Joy St John (second right), executive director, Caribbean Public Health Agency (CAPPHA), during the launch of the health information management platf
Contributed
Minister of Health & Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton examines the Project Commitment Letter presented by Dr Joy St John (second right), executive director, Caribbean Public Health Agency (CAPPHA), during the launch of the health information management platform, District Health Information Software version 2 (DHIS2) to enable population-wide reporting on cancer burden by the National Cancer Registry (NCR) of Jamaica. Looking on are Dr Simone Spence (left), director of the health promotion & rotection branch in the Ministry of Health & Wellness and Dr Heather Armstrong, head, Chronic Disease and Injury Department, and principal investigator, IARC Caribbean Cancer Registry Hub, CARPHA.
Minister of Health & Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton, accepts the Project Commitment Letter from Dr Joy St John, executive director, CAPPHA during the launch of the health information management platform, District Health Information Software version 2 (DHIS
Contributed
Minister of Health & Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton, accepts the Project Commitment Letter from Dr Joy St John, executive director, CAPPHA during the launch of the health information management platform, District Health Information Software version 2 (DHIS2) to enable population-wide reporting on cancer burden by the National Cancer Registry of Jamaica.
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JAMAICA WILL be the first country in the Caribbean and second in the world to use the health information management platform, District Health Information Software version 2 (DHIS2) to enable population-wide reporting on cancer burden by the National Cancer Registry of Jamaica.

The use of this groundbreaking software is made possible through the award of a grant from the Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health (D4H) Initiative’s Global Grants Programme, for the project entitled, ‘Using DHIS2 to Strengthen Cancer Registration Data Systems in Low-resourced Countries: From Rwanda to Jamaica’, submitted by the ministry, in collaboration with Caribbean Public Health Agency.

Speaking at the project launch in New Kingston on Tuesday, Minister of Health & Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton noted that “there is a prevailing need for local data to guide response, policy development and programme monitoring and evaluation in order to achieve comprehensive cancer prevention and control”.

“It is against this background that Jamaica has included in its National Strategic and Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Cancer, the improvement in data collection and utilisation within the National Cancer Registry,” Dr Tufton added.

The project is to improve cancer control by operationalising a data collection and reporting system that will improve the availability of national cancer data, which can be used by the ministry to guide cancer prevention and control strategies locally. This will involve the installation, customisation and use of an oncology module using the health information management platform DHIS2.

In the April 2023 publication of Jamaica’s Vitals, the NCDs Edition, cancer is shown to be the leading cause of death in the island, accounting for some 23.7 per cent of non-communicable diseases deaths and 18.9 per cent of all deaths in 2020.There were an estimated 7,348 new cancer cases, and 4,746 cancer deaths in 2020.

Breast and prostate cancers were shown to be among the top-six leading cause of death. Over a decade (2010 to 2020), breast cancer increased by 63 per cent and prostate cancer by 25 per cent.