Background: Health information in general and cancer information in particular in Viet Nam is an basic data for decisions related to health planning prevent against cancer. However, very limited database of cancer information bas been available to date. The aim of the present study was to examine cancer mortality pattern nationwide in Viet Nam.
Methods: Descriptive cancer epidemiology was designed for the present study. Both demographic data and list of all deaths during the two years period, 2005-06, were obtained from all 10,769 commune health stations. Five indicators included name, age, sex, date of death and cause of death was collected for each case. A guideline to report demographic data of each commune and information of each case who has been lived at least 6 months in their commune was prepared in the designed form and sent by express mail service to all the heads of 10,769 commune health stations throughout country. The data comprises all cancer mortality records at the commune-level for the period 2005-06. All obtained data of cancer deaths as well as demographic information was computed using Excel software. The Excel data was exported to STATA 8.0 for cancer analysis. Cancer case was coded following ICD-10.
Results: To date, 94.6% of the 10,769 communes (from the 638 of 671 districts within the 64 provinces) have forwarded the required data and we currently have approximately 93,719 cancer deaths for the 2 years period. Number of person-year was 76,726,873 in 2005 and 77,902,688 in 2006. Number of cancer deaths was 45,413 (29,189 males and 16,224 females) in 2005 and 48,306 (31,447 males and 16,859 females) in 2006. Male to female ratios were 1.8 and 1.9 in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Three most common cancer sites numbered of 61,079 (65% of all 93,719 cancer deaths) included 25,410 liver cancer; 22,209 lung cancer; and 13,460 stomach cancer. Among both males and females, liver cancer was ranked in the first most common (31,04% and 19.91%), followed by lung cancer (26.69% and 18.21%) and stomach (14.42% and 14.26%). Among females, cervix and other female genital cancers were ranked in the four most common (9.13%) and breast cancer was about 5.69%.
Conclusions: Participated proportion of nationwide administration units and population was over 90% to report about 93,719 deaths from cancer that suggested that cancer has been highly concerned by social as well as people due to a number of thousand life lost. This condition will accept well primary cancer prevention at commune level in Viet Nam to eliminate the ancient disease of cancer in human.