Market Intelligence
Healthcare Sub-Saharan Africa Tanzania Market Research

Tanzania Combating Cancer Initiative

Tanzania is a country with many patients presenting HPV related cancers. Annually there are more than 4,000 patients with HPV related cancers, including cervical, anal, head and neck cancers. The leading cause of women’s deaths by cancer in Tanzania is cervical cancer.  The incidence of cervical cancer is 54 per 100,000 women in Tanzania whereas globally it is 14 per 100,000 women. A major contributing factor to the high burden of the disease is low awareness of the disease, lack of prevention knowledge and unavailability of organized screening programs. The standard screening test is visual inspection with acetic acid as this can be performed by mid-level healthcare workers and allows for immediate treatment.  A negative aspect of visual inspection by acetic acid is the subjective nature of the diagnosis interpretation and hence has variable results, also due to lack of resources only a small number of women get screened. HPV is more prevalent in HIV positive women. For a country like Tanzania that has a high HIV prevalence, HIV positive women are at a high risk of contracting HPV.

Opportunities
 
Improving prevention of cervical cancer by the government of Tanzania will reduce the burden of cancer treatment in the country. Once diagnosis has been established, early treatment would increase survival rate significantly.

Export opportunities leading to positive health outcomes:

  • Widespread testing, currently the government is administering HPV vaccines without testing as they have limited resources. The standard protocol is to do an HPV screening before administering a vaccine.
  • The government, through the WHO, administers HPV 16 & 18 vaccine while in Tanzania there is mostly HPV 16 and 33. So Tanzania would benefit more from vaccines that covers other HPV strains as well.
  •  HPV related cancers are usually squamous cell carcinoma, and these are treated by radiotherapy. There are 4 machines available at the Ocean Road Cancer Institute.  (ORCI), 1 in Besta and 1 in Bugando hospital. The ORCI machines operate 24/7 to cut the waiting time to treatment. More radiology machines will ensure that more people are treated.
  • Establishment of affordable specialized cancer hospitals. There is currently a limited number of private providers for cancer screening and treatment.

Constraints

Lack of financial and personnel resources is a challenge in this market.

For more information contact Mary Paul Msemwa, Commercial Specialist, Mary.Msemwa@trade.gov.

.