AORTIC 2019 Conference Puts the Spotlight on Eradicating Cancer in Africa

ASCP participated last month in the 2019 African Organization for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC) meeting in Maputo, Mozambique, which drew more than 1,000 participants from over 55 countries. Together, they engaged in discussion around the theme, Cancer in Africa: Innovation, Strategies, Implementation.

AORTIC—the largest international conference that has a multidisciplinary focus on cancer in Africa—addresses cancers that affect Africans and care protocols and treatments that are relevant in the African environment.

During the conference, Dr. Deo Ruhangaza, pathologist at Butaro Hospital, Butaro, Rwanda, discussed his hospital’s telepathology program in partnership with ASCP, along with the challenges and best practices the program has encountered. Dr. Ruhangaza, along with pathologists at six other laboratories supported by ASCP member volunteers, send consult cases for review and receive results within 24 hours, improving turnaround time, accuracy and quality of patient cancer diagnoses. Dr. Ruhangaza also presented a poster on his study of retinoblastomas in Butaro.

Clinical partners from the non-profit Partners in Health, one of the care-and-treatment partners collaborating with ASCP on the Partners for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment in Africa initiative, including Dr. Dayo Fadelu, Dr. Cyprien Shyirambere and Dr. Becky DeBoer, presented multiple sessions on medical oncology, radiotherapy and surgery for cancer in Africa.

ASCP Chief Medical Officer Dan A. Milner, Jr., MD, MSc(Epi), FASCP, led a roundtable discussion on global oncology with a particular emphasis on the challenges of implementing diagnostics for cancer based on the anecdotal experience and data from ASCP’s Partners for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment in Africa initiative, along with collaborators and participants.

Her Royal Highness Princess Dina Mired of Jordan, President of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) and speaker at the ASCP 2019 Annual Meeting, presented the keynote address at the AORTIC conference in concert with the First Lady of Mozambique.

Concurrent with the AORTIC conference were several separate meetings supporting ASCP's global health programs or ASCP support of collaborative programs. These included the International Consortium on Cancer Control and Partners in Cancer Control, a new initiative launched by Bristol-Myers-Squibb, ASCP and other partners.

Before the AORTIC conference began, ASCP’s Dr. Milner, along with the ASCP Mozambique PEPFAR team and representatives from the Mozambique Ministry of Health, were faculty and participants in a two-day Project ECHO Immersion training program. Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a movement to de-monopolize knowledge and expand the capacity to provide best practice care for underserved people all over the world. The program was designed to teach the tools of ECHO for replication of the telementoring model. For this special immersion program, more than 50 participants from a dozen countries in Africa discussed the mechanics, value, and future projects for the ECHO Model, focusing on HIV, cancer, pathology, dermatology, and other important disease areas for the continent.