National Cancer Registry to Launch in Coming Months

The Ministry of Health and Wellness is preparing to enhance its data capabilities through the rollout of a national cancer registry. The registry will expand the coverage of cancer data between public and private health facilities and give physicians greater access to data for analysis. Dr. Melissa Diaz Musa, Director of Public Health and Wellness, says that the new registry is being rolled out in the next few months after extensive discussions with stakeholders. 

Dr. Melissa Diaz Musa, Director of Health and Wellness: “We have been discussing the cancer registry for quite a number of months now but we’ve finally honed in on what we feel that we will use in the country. So within the next month or so the cancer registry will also be rolled out and that will help doctors in private and public sector to put the diagnosis into the system so that our data will be data that we can trust and data that we have gathered from both public and private health facilities. Well, currently the Ministry of Health and Wellness we get our data through our Belize Health Information System. And this BHIS system is available throughout the country  of Belize in all our public health facilities. And it’s also available in some private facilities but it’s not rolled out totally in private sector. And so if we use a cancer registry that’s web-based that a doctor or a pathologist can access they can enter this into a system that our epidemiologic unit can pull that data. And so our information will be more accurate. Many times, or in certain circumstances, people who have felt a lump or who have had some kind of symptom that may suggest cancer might have gone privately or they might go abroad and come back and go privately. So the Ministry of Health might not have access to that data. So it’s important that if we launch our cancer registry we have accurate up-to-date information and we can make then our decisions based on that information given to us by all sectors. And as you know, private sector is expanding, so we’ve got to be inclusive and we’ve got to ensure that we’re able to access information from private sector as well.”

The registry will exist as a separate platform from the Belize Health Information System (BHIS).