Estimates of Cancer Mortality in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam in the 1990s

As cancer mortality data is not available, a study regarding the real problem of cancer mortality is timely and urgent in Viet Nam. Therefore the aim of the present study was to calculate cancer mortality in the city of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh. The correlation between cancer mortality to incidence ratios and relative survival probabilities for 23 cancer sites was estimated according to SEER (1973-97), then cancer mortality was calculated from the cancer incidence and cancer survival for 25 cancer sites in each city. Cancer mortality rate for all cancer sites except skin (ASR per 100,000) was 103.9 for males and 52.4 for females in Hanoi, and 93.7 for males and 60.7 for females in Ho Chi Minh. For males, the five most common cancer deaths were cancers of the lung, liver, stomach, colon/rectum, and nasopharynx in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh. For females, cancer death in the cervix was uncommon in Hanoi but the most common site in Ho Chi Minh (ASR 2.2 VS. 14.2 per 100,000). The present findings are the first results of cancer mortality from Viet Nam and should be useful for further cancer control programs there.