ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To document general baseline data on the patterns of childhood malignant tumours at a teaching hospital in south-western Nigeria. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: A retrospective study of childhood malignancy at Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital, Sagamu, Nigeria, during an 11-year period, from January 1996 to December 2006. RESULTS: 77 children were diagnosed with malignant tumours (an average of seven diagnoses per year); 46 were boys (60%), giving a male-to-female ratio of 1.5 : 1. The age distribution of patients was 1-18 years. There were 42 diagnoses (55%) in the 1-5-year age group and 68 malignancies (88%) were diagnosed at ages of 12 years or younger. Lymphomas were the most prevalent malignancy identified, accounting for 31 diagnoses (40%). Burkitt's lymphoma constituted the majority of malignancies (28 cases; 36%), followed by retinoblastoma (16 cases; 21%) and nephroblastoma (11 cases; 14%). Other malignancies included germ cell tumours (6), neuroblastomas (4), osteosarcomas (3), rhabdomyosarcomas (3) and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (3). One case each of medullary thyroid carcinoma, adenocarcinoma of the rectum, invasive mucinous carcinoma of the colon were also identified. CONCLUSION: These data suggest that Burkitt's lymphoma is the most common childhood malignant tumour in our geographic area of south-western Nigeria. With the rising incidence of childhood malignancy in resource-poor countries, measuring the baseline occurrence of such tumours is imperative to provide much-needed resource allocation.
Subject(s)
Hospitals, Teaching/statistics & numerical data , Neoplasms/epidemiology , Adolescent , Child , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , Infant , Infant, Newborn , Male , Nigeria/epidemiology , Retrospective StudiesABSTRACT
The World Health Organization's (WHO) concept of primary healthcare as the basis for comprehensive healthcare delivery for developing countries has not been effectively applied in many of these countries. The Kingdom of Lesotho, one of the world's least-developed countries, has been able to provide a fairly comprehensive healthcare system for its citizenry based on prmary healthcare principles and a strong commitment on the part of the government despite severe limitations of finance and human resource capacity as well as difficult mountainous terrains. This paper presents the highlights of this system of healthcare delivery with the hope that other developing countries would draw some lessons from the model.
