2 Data

Maps are based on the city/municipality-specific cancer registry data from two Philippine population-based cancer registries, the Philippine Cancer Society - Manila Cancer Registry and the Department of Health - Rizal Cancer Registry. These two registries, using an active method of cancer registration, have provided incidence data since 1978 in the 30 cities/municipalities of Metro Manila and the adjoining Rizal province, with an area of 1,674 square kilometers. The 2000 census listed 11,174,345 residents. The Rizal Cancer Registry has been included in volumes V, VI and VIII, and Manila Cancer Registry in volumes VI to IX of Cancer Incidence In Five Continents of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (see Cancer Mondial at http://www-dep.iacr.fr).

To produce animated maps, cancer incidence rates were calculated for each municipality for 7-year periods 1980-1986, 1984-1990, …, 1996-2002, adjusted for age using the World Standard Population.

For a given municipality, the observations were assigned to geographical central points ; other geographical data needed included geographical data with respect to the specific coordinates of national borders (using Alber’s equal area projection (Snyder, 1987)), major lakes,waterways as well as sparsely-populated areas. Three adminstrative regions were located in two separate geographical locations. For these regions, the incidence rate was also located to two separate map coordinates with weights to correspond sizes of populations living in those regions.