Lung cancer mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa

Valid data on mortality is a very important part of vital statistics for health policy. Worldwide, lung cancer (LC) is the most frequent cancer death among men with an estimated age-adjusted mortality (ASR) of 31.2 per 100,000 in the year 2002. Tobacco smoking causes more than 90% of all LC cases in developed countries, though, WHO reports the lowest LC mortality is seen in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). There are two possible explanations for this observation: (i) a considerably low smoking prevalence and (ii) errors in cancer diagnosis. However, in 1995, the estimated prevalence of smoking was high in males (28%) a…