Treating childhood cancer in Rwanda: the nephroblastoma example

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Wilms tumor (WT) or nephroblastoma is the commonest childhood cancer in Rwanda.Nephroblastoma is regarded as one of the successes of pediatric oncology with long-term survival approaching 90%. The Objectives to evaluate the feasibilityof treating childhood cancer using the nephroblastoma example and to calculate its cost of treatment in Rwanda. METHODS: prospective study over a 2 year period: 01 Jan 2010- 31 December 2011.A questionnaire was completed by all participants in the study and the following variables were collected at Kigali University Teaching Hospital: age at diagnosis, gender, transport cost, cost of investigations, staging, treatment and outcome, cost of hospitalization, type of medical, surgical, radiological interventions and their costs, number of admissions per patient and factors related to non compliance to treatment. All patients had a confirmed diagnosis on histopathology examination. The cost for treatment was calculated for early and late stage and was expressed in USA dollars. Analysis was done with SPSS 16.0.

Keywords

• cost
• nephroblastoma
• rwanda
• childhood cancer
• africa