Improving Cancer Care for Children in the Developing World: Challenges and Strategies.

Cancer is a global health problem particularly in developing countries where the burden of cancer is ever increasing and claiming the lives of about 100,000 children under the age of 15 years every year. Majority of these occur in the Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) where 90% of world children live. Contributing factors to this trend is the reduction of communicable diseases and emergence of new infections, improvement of nutrition and socio-economic conditions, industrialization and urbanization.

Childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia in the Middle East and neighboring countries: a prospective multi-institutional international collaborative study (CALLME1) by the Middle East Childhood Cancer Alliance (MECCA).

Background: Little is known about childhood ALL in the Middle East. This study was undertaken by MECCA as initial efforts in collaborative data collection to provide clinical and demographic information on children with ALL in the Middle East.

Procedure: Clinical and laboratory data for patients with ALL between January 2008 and April 2012 were prospectively collected from institutions in 14 Middle East countries and entered into a custom-built-database during induction phase.

Optimizing Hydroxyurea use in children with sickle cell disease: low dose regimen is effective.

Background And Objectives: Hydroxyurea (HU) is the standard treatment for severely affected children with sickle cell disease (SCD). Starting dose is 15-20 mg/kg/day that can be escalated up to 35 mg/kg/day. Ethnic neutropenia is common in this area of the world that requires judicious usage of myelosuppressive drugs.

Transcranial Doppler ultrasonography in sickle cell disease: a study in Omani patients.

Changes on Transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasonography have been proposed as significant predictors of cerebrovascular complications in sickle cell disease (SCD). However, consensus with regards to the TCD criteria to recognize abnormalities in cerebral vasculature is lacking. We studied the TCD characteristics of cerebral arteries among Omani patients with SCD and correlated them with cerebrovascular events.