Disease Mapping for Stomach Cancer in Libya Based on Besag– York– Mollié (BYM) Model

Alhdiri, Maryam Ahmed Salem; Samat, Nor Azah; Mohamed, Zulkifley

doi:10.22034/APJCP.2017.18.6.1479

Disease Mapping for Stomach Cancer in Libya Based on Besag– York– Mollié (BYM) Model

Document Type : Research Articles

Authors

¹ Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science, University of Tripoli, Alfernag, Tripoli, Libya.

² Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science and Mathematics, Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, 35900 Tanjong Malim, Perak, Malaysia

10.22034/APJCP.2017.18.6.1479

Abstract

Globally, Cancer is the ever-increasing health problem and most common cause of medical deaths. In Libya, it is an important health concern, especially in the setting of an aging population and limited healthcare facilities. Therefore, the goal of this research is to map of the county’ cancer incidence rate using the Bayesian method and identify the high-risk regions (for the first time in a decade). In the field of disease mapping, very little has been done to address the issue of analyzing sparse cancer diseases in Libya. Standardized Morbidity Ratio or SMR is known as a traditional approach to measure the relative risk of the disease, which is the ratio of observed and expected number of accounts in a region that has the greatest uncertainty if the disease is rare or small geographical region. Therefore, to solve some of SMR’s problems, we used statistical smoothing or Bayesian models to estimate the relative risk for stomach cancer incidence in Libya in 2007 based on the BYM model. This research begins with a short offer of the SMR and Bayesian model with BYM model, which we applied to stomach cancer incidence in Libya. We compared all of the results using maps and tables. We found that BYM model is potentially beneficial, because it gives better relative risk estimates compared to SMR method. As well as, it has can overcome the classical method problem when there is no observed stomach cancer in a region.

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