£l0,000 For Cancer Registry

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30287, 13 November 1963, Page 16

£l0,000 For Cancer Registry

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, November 12. A public gift of £lO.OOO to establish and equip a cancer registry in Auckland will mark the centenary of the “New Zealand Herald” tomorrow. In making the gift to the Auckland Hospital Board, the directors of Wilson and Horton, Ltd., have provided that the services of the registry in cancer treatment and research are to be offered to all other hospital boards in the Auckland province. It is also stipulated that the registry shall serve in the national and inter-

national campaigns against cancer The purpose of the gift is to establish within the medical statistics unit at the Auckland Hospital a special section to be known as the Herald Centenary Cancer Registry. It will be furnished with the latest electronic equipment for filing, collating and processing all the available data on cancer cases in the Auckland province or in any wider area to which its use may be extended. Records and statistics are playing an increasingly important part in the fight against eancer. In Auckland at present the records are little more than brief case histories compiled by the various hospital units which deal with different aspects of cancer. The existing records are of limited value, both clinically and in research, because they

cannot be swiftly and accurately correlated and analysed. The special equipment will enable all case histories, including diagnosis, treatment and after-care, to be electronically recorded in such a fashion that accurate statistical information will be available at any time on any particular line of inquiry. A doctor dealing with a certain type of cancer i>n an individual patient will be able to examine all the essential facts of similar local cases. Medical authorities who were consulted before a decision was made on the form of gift unanimously affirmed that access to knowledge thus electronically processed would result in precise assessment of the local pattern of the disease, would enable doctors to determine rapidly the most beneficial form of treatment, and could

aid eventually in saving life. The doctors said the skilled use of the equipment would greatly aid research. Any benefits received by the people of Auckland would not stop here but could have widespread effects on the diagnosis and treatment of cancer in many parts of the world The directors of Wilson and Horton, Ltd., say the thought behind the gift is that the registry should assist in bringing healing aid to cancer sufferers throughout the Auckland province. To that end the co-operation of the provincial hospital boards is being sought. It has been agreed that the registry should function in the closest liaison with the medical statistics branch of the Department of Health. More than 3000 new cancer cases a year pass through the hospitals administered by the Auckland Hospital Board.