Epidemiology of smoking-related cancers in South Africa

South Africa has a heterogeneous population of 40 million, and about one-third of all persons over the age of 16 smoke. Information on the local risks of tobacco-attributable disease is sparse, but there is evidence that the incidence of lung cancer is increasing. To study the effects of the tobacco epidemic (and other important risk factors), black patients with a newly diagnosed cancer who are admitted to one of the three major public referral hospitals around Johannesburg are interviewed on an on-going basis. To date, 898 male and 1328 female patients have been interviewed for a case-control study. The controls are patients with cancers not associated with exposure to tobacco.