OBJECTIVES:

Population-wide screening in Kazakhstan started in 2009 with the introduction of cervical cancer and breast cancer screening programs. However, there is a lack of published research discussing screening programs and their impact in the local context. Hereby, interrupted-time series analysis was attempted using openly available national-level data on the incidence of cervical and breast cancers to discuss the findings in the context of Kazakhstan’s national screening program.

METHODS:

Data extracted from the annual official healthcare-related statistical compendiums from 2000 to 2016 was used. Statistical analysis was performed using Stata software. Segmented regression models were used with the intervention set at 2009.

RESULTS:

The incidence of cervical cancer increased from 1017 cases in 2000 to 1713 in 2016, while the proportion of stage IV cancer among the new cases dropped from 9.7% to 3.2%. As for breast cancer, incidence increased at an even higher rate from 2615 cases in 2000 to 4598 cases in 2016, with the stage IV cancer proportion reduced from 17% to 4.3%. Observed trends prior to and after the introduction of screening may suggest that the introduction of screening has had an impact on improving detection of cancers.

CONCLUSIONS:

As a research area, assessing the impact of the introduction of public health interventions is relevant in the context of Kazakhstan as a developing country with limited resources available for public health expenditure. While observed trends may suggest a positive impact of the national screening program, interpretability of results is limited due to the modeling approaches used. Given the lack of available data and local research on the topic, the analysis presented in this paper is an attempt at facilitating discussion and hypotheses generation for future research in the field.