Systematic Review of Cancer Research Output From Africa, With Zambia as an Example.

Cancer occurrence is increasing in Africa, although research has lagged. The objective of this review was to analyze cancer research outputs from Africa, with a particular focus on Zambia. We searched PubMed for published cancer-related articles from African countries. All articles reporting on cancer in Africa were considered. We conducted analyses to explore correlations between cancer research output and total population, gross domestic product, and new cancer cases recorded in 2020. For Zambia articles, we also analyzed cancer types and time trends. A total of 48,487 cancer-related publications from Africa were identified, with nearly half coming from Egypt (13,372; 28%) and South Africa (9,393; 19%). Cancer research output correlated significantly with country population (Spearman's correlation coefficient 0.74; Cancer research output from Africa is very low, with many of the publications concentrated in a few countries. There is an urgent need to invest in both human resources and infrastructure to increase cancer research output from African countries, particularly in less populous countries.