Challenges to Promoting Population-Based Cancer Registration in Iran: a Workshop Report

In December 2011, the Cancer Research Centre of the Cancer Institute of Iran sponsored a 3-day workshopon “Cancer Registration Principle and Challenges in Iran”, which convened cancer registry experts. Theobjectives of the workshop were: to introduce standard cancer registration, to review the policy and procedureof cancer registration in Iran, and to review the best practices in the cancer registries in Iran. Challenges tocancer registration were discussed and recommendations were developed. The workshop was evaluated byparticipants for better organization of subsequent workshops. The objective of publication of this report is thatbased on Cancer in 5 Continents, many low- or middle-income countries do not meet the criteria for a standardpopulation-based cancer registry (PBCR); on the other hand cancer is the most important cause of mortalityand the essential part of any cancer control program is the cancer registry. Therefore this report focuses onproblems and challenges of PBCR and provides recommendations which might help other developing countriesto decrease their PBCR defects.