This section is for clinicians, researchers and programme staff. It sets out what the Ethiopian Organization for Cancer Prevention and Research (CPR – Ethiopia) does, what is established about the national cervical screening programme, what we award to early career scientists, and how to read the figures that make up the Ethiopian cancer data record.
Who we are
We run our research programme through the units below. Behavioural Research (BRET) covers the prevention and reduction of behaviours that raise cancer risk and the determinants of participation in evidence-based screening, across the continuum from prevention to end-of-life care. Cancer Health Services Research (CHSR) covers value-based cancer services using real-world outcomes and cost data, including patient-reported outcomes, patients’ experience of services and the economic burden of cancer. Tobacco Control Research (TCR) covers surveillance, aetiology and cessation, and includes the CEASE project on compliance with and enforcement of anti-smoking policy.
The Scientific Research Committee advises the Board of Directors on our research and its funding, and reviews projects for ethical standards and participant confidentiality. The International Advisory Board provides high-level advice on an individual project basis. The governance page sets out both.
We are a research organisation, and our work is the programme described above. Patient care, appointments, tests and treatment are arranged through health facilities.
Reading the national figures
Ethiopia’s 2024 burden estimate was 79,239 new cases and 46,841 deaths (opens in a new tab). Both figures are modelled: incidence extrapolates subnational registry rates to the national population, and mortality applies modelled mortality-to-incidence ratios to that incidence. GLOBOCAN grades the incidence method 2b and the mortality method 3c. Two practical consequences for anyone using the pair: read it as an estimate of national scale, and treat the two numbers as one measurement rather than two, since mortality moves with incidence by construction.
Sources disagree on whether Ethiopia has a population-based cancer registry. Ethiopia reported to WHO in 2021 that one exists (opens in a new tab) (Global Health Observatory, indicator NCD_CCS_PBCR). An Ethiopian registry appears in neither IARC’s Cancer Incidence in Five Continents nor its Cancer Over Time series. Both positions are recorded on data and evidence and neither is adjudicated here.
Service capacity carries a 2021 reference year and financing a 2023 one. Cancer surgery, radiotherapy, pathology laboratories, an operational cancer plan, national cancer management guidelines and oral morphine were reported available in the public sector in 2021; the same return recorded palliative care as not provided in primary health care or in community and home-based care. Radiotherapy units were 0.09 per million population in 2021 (DEVICES22). Out-of-pocket payment was 46% of health expenditure in 2023 (GHED_OOPSCHE_SHA2011). The workforce indicators for 2024 record 20,593 medical doctors (HWF_0002) and 143,270 nursing and midwifery personnel (HWF_0007). All are WHO Global Health Observatory indicators.
The pages in this section
Screening and referral — what is established about the national cervical screening programme: opportunistic delivery, VIA as the routine test, a 30–49 target range, 4% of women aged 30–49 ever screened in 2019 (WHO Global Health Observatory (opens in a new tab), indicator NCD_CXCA_SCREENED_WITHIN_TIMEPERIOD), and how that figure sits against the 2030 target as written.
Training — the grants and fellowships we award from time to time to early career scientists, and where a proposal is reviewed.
Data and evidence — the research units’ measurement agenda, how Ethiopian cancer surveillance is compiled, the disagreements between sources that we publish rather than resolve, and what we can supply.
Proposals for joint work are covered on the collaborate page. Enquiries reach us at cancer.prev.ethio@gmail.com or +251 92 012 4183.
What the public pages carry
Colleagues asked by patients where to find written information can use the same pages we publish for the public: about cancer for the burden estimates and how to read them, early detection for screening, reduce your risk for the established risk factors and Ethiopian exposure figures, and support for what follows a diagnosis. The glossary defines the terms those pages use as their sources define them.