College of Medicine, University of Malawi and Medical Association of Malawi
Abstract
Given that oesophageal cancer (OC) is common in Malawi and its outcome
is so dismal, would it be pragmatic to promptly mitigate the effects of
smoking, alcohol and aflatoxins rather than seek a higher degree of
local evidence for their role in OC? We retrospectively analysed a
total of 13,217 OC and Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS) cases as recorded in
the Malawi National Cancer Registry from 1985 to February, 2006. We
found no OC clustering to suggest a role for culturally variable habits
like smoking, alcohol, maize use and maize storage in the country. It
may be that drinking and eating hot foods physically damages the
oesophageal mucosa, this is in line with work recently reported from
Asia. We also found that OC numbers have risen in line with KS (and
HIV) suggesting a link between these conditions