Economic comparison of two strategies of oral cancer screening

Cancer is an important public health problem and new strategiesare needed for its prevention and control. Due to socioeconomicconstraints, a lack of adequate health care infrastructure andother competing health priorities in Trivandrum, there is apressing need to evaluate locally feasible and cost-effectivecancer control strategies. The Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvananthapuram(RCCT), therefore developed and tested two innovative strategies.The first method used the mass media, the second trained unemployedyouth to carry out the initial screening process. Economic evaluationof both strategies was undertaken which showed that screeningusing young volunteers is more cost-effective, since more earlycancers and pre-cancers can be detected through this method.Screening using the mass media only, was found to be 4–9times more expensive in terms of costs per unit of outcome,than using trained volunteers. We therefore recommend the useof trained volunteers in oral cancer detection camps.