We are the Ethiopian Organization for Cancer Prevention and Research (CPR – Ethiopia), a non-governmental, not-for-profit organisation established in 2019 and registered in Ethiopia. Our work is in cancer prevention and early detection, through research, education and advocacy.
What we are working towards
Our aim is to reduce the cancer mortality rate in Ethiopia, and we work towards it in three ways.
The first is to direct individual behaviour, public policy and research towards prevention and early detection.
The second is to make prevention knowledge and early detection services more accessible to people in medically underserved communities. Ethiopia’s cervical screening programme is opportunistic — WHO Global Health Observatory, indicator NCD_CCS_cervicalcancerpgmtype (opens in a new tab) — so a woman is screened when she comes forward at a facility that offers a test. In 2019, 4% of Ethiopian women aged 30–49 had ever been screened (indicator NCD_CXCA_SCREENED_WITHIN_TIMEPERIOD). Knowing that the test exists, and where to ask for it, is what decides whether a woman gets one.
The third is to work with partners, so that prevention and early detection programmes reach further than any one organisation could take them.
What we do
Research. Our research programme runs through units: behavioural research on the behaviours that raise cancer risk and on what helps people take up screening; cancer health services research on the outcomes, experience and cost of cancer services; and tobacco control research. We also award research grants and fellowships from time to time to early career scientists. What each unit covers is set out on the research pages.
Evidence for the public. The reduce your risk and early detection pages set out what is established about each risk factor and each screening question, and what the Ethiopian figures show.
Policy work. Evidence-based advocacy, addressed to the ministries, agencies and legislators who set tobacco tax, buy screening commodities and decide what a household pays at the point of care.
Ethiopia’s cancer burden
Ethiopia’s estimated burden for 2024 was 79,239 new cases and 46,841 deaths (opens in a new tab), on IARC’s modelled estimates. Breast, cervical and colorectal cancers were the three most commonly diagnosed. Those three shape what our prevention and early detection work concentrates on.
Ethiopia ran a full national adult tobacco survey in 2024 and presented the results at a forum in Addis Ababa in April 2025. Five prevalence figures from that survey are available through the WHO Global Health Observatory, and national NCD survey datasets are catalogued in the WHO NCD Microdata Repository (opens in a new tab).
Where we work
We work from Addis Ababa. Enquiries reach us at cancer.prev.ethio@gmail.com, and the contact page sets out how to get a message to the right person.
CPR – Ethiopia works in prevention and research rather than treatment. Anyone who has noticed a change in their body should be assessed by a health worker rather than waiting for a screening round.
The rest of this section covers governance, the Board of Directors, the International Advisory Board, our people, accountability, partners and careers.