Minutes of the Meeting of AORTIC North America at AACR

Held on April 3, 2006

At the Capital Hilton

Washington, DC, USA

Chris Williams opened the meeting stating that Sulma Mohammed, the Vice President of the North America regional chapter had asked him to moderate the meeting. He presented the history of the organization, including the creation of AORTIC International in 2000, the objective of which he stated was to reactivate AORTIC in Africa after its moribund status after less than a decade of its existence as an African cancer organization. He described the structure of AORTIC consisting of the Executive Council, the AORTIC Council, 5 African regional Vice-Presidents representing the 5 African geographical regions (East, West, North, South and Central). He explained the renaming of AORTIC International to AORTIC North America, to function as the 6^th regional chapter of AORTIC as agreed to at the recent international AORTIC conference, with its own Vice-President as of November 2005 in Dakar, Senegal.

Chris Williams then returned to the agenda of the day, which was accepted without modification. The minutes of the meetings of AORTIC International held at AACR and ASCO in 2005 were also accepted as the correct records of the events.

Contributing comments on "Matters arising from the minutes of the two meetings", Samuel Adunyah asked to know the reason for Seth Ayettey’s inability to continue as President. He was informed that it was due to preoccupation with his several commitments at the time, including Deanship of a medical school, leadership of a local religious congregation, and numerous international commitments, including board membership of World Vision. It was also pointed out that Seth Ayettey remains a member of the AORTIC Council as Past-President, and continues to contribute actively to the ongoing activities of AORTIC.

In her presentation on "The Year in Review", Sulma Mohammed described the role of AORTIC International in the successful organization of the 5^th International Conference on Cancer in Africa. She informed of the successful grant application to NCI, whereby "symbolic meeting funds" had been granted for three consecutive international meetings of AORTIC in Africa. The support of Joe Harford of NCI in this regard was acknowledged, and his inability to be at the meeting as a result of prior travel commitments was noted.

Chris Williams gave a synopsis of the events at the Dakar meeting. He referred to a joint PowerPoint presentation on the summary of the meeting made by Jean-Marie Dangou and himself in which the scientific aspect of the meeting was described, along with the recommendations emanating from the many sessions. He indicated the need to extract the salient recommendations from the summary presentation and make them available to the Executive Committee for prioritization. It was also suggested that the members of the local organizing committee be contacted with a request to make audio-visual recordings of events at the meeting be made available for purchase if possible.

Jim Holland presented a research proposal that he said he had been discussing with Paul Ndom, Twalib Ngoma and others in Africa, which would explore the potential of changing the current pattern of late presentation of cancers in African that could otherwise be recognized at earlier stages by trained laymen. It would be a randomized study of villages in regions of Africa to an interventional versus control groups. The population based intervention would be in form of visual inspections of parts of the body surface areas that are prone to development of visually detectable cancers, such as the breasts, testis, anorectum etc by lay individuals who would be identified by village chiefs and who would be trained in disease recognitions by Assistant Professors of cancer centers in the research areas. Jim Holland said he was in the process of getting some New York insurance and investment concerns interested for pro-bono funding. The concept of the proposal was generally welcome as desirable. In an extensive and lively series of discussions, views were presented raising issues of cultural, ethical and socio-psychological challenges that might be breached in the process of carrying out the proposal as described, and the implications within Africa and international scientific community of such breaches. Ideas were shared on how the proposal could be modified with the aim of achieving its goals. The proposal should be further fleshed out, and shared again with members of AORTIC Council for further discussion.

In her presentation of the financial status of AORTIC and AORTIC International/North America, Barrie Adedeji pointed out that the Dakar meeting was a financial success. At the end of year ending on December 31, 2005 cash at hand was $ 18, 629.94. She also distributed detailed statements of account.

Other matters:

Various speakers made suggestions as to how African scientists could access to training in North America, including:

Interaction with ASCO through the Multi-Disciplinary Cancer Management Course (MCMC)

Interaction with AACR through MICR.

o AORTIC North America/AACR-MICR joint scientific session at the next AORTIC conference in Cape Town, South Africa

o AORTIC North America to interact with AACR-MICR to organize a cancer symposium at AACR, focusing on cancer control issues of importance to people of African descent.

Some discussion was held on the how to promote the activities of AORTIC at regional and national level. The formation of AORTIC Nigeria was cited as an interesting and encouraging example.

The meeting ended with a group photograph.

Chris Williams, MD, FRCPC

Recorder.