The number of cancer patient is increasing among developed and developing Member States. This disease has become a burden to national development. In this circumstance, IAEA/RCA has supported Member States with projects related with brachytherapy and radiotherapy focusing on QA/QC of cervical cancer to help out with patients in the region during the past several years. With lessons learned from previous projects, future project direction will be discussed. The project planning meeting will first be held at the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, India in 4-9 March 2005.

This new project is expected to be implemented in three different areas; i) improvement of brachytherapy in the region, ii) training of RTTs (radiotherapy-radiographers) for improved patient care and iii) building the regional capability for equipment and repairs in the field of radiotherapy. In each spectrum, the project envisages the followings respectively. Focus will be placed on more common types of cancer that require radiotherapy treatment. This project will also help establish local capacity for training programmes in respective national languages, if necessary through “train the trainers” activity. Comprehensive database about various requirements in the maintenance for radiation oncology equipment in the RCA region will be another achievement.
For further information, write to Prof. Shyam Shrivastava at sshyam@mtnl.net.in