Bridging the gap: laboratory aspects of diagnosing pediatric hematologic malignancies at Yangon Children’s Hospital

Abstract

Myanmar profileMyanmar is a country in Southeast Asia with a population of 52 million. Of those, ;14 million are younger than age 14 years. 1 Hematologic malignancies are now the second most common among pediatric malignancies worldwide after central nervous system tumors, but they are still the most common malignancies in Myanmar. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that Myanmar has a total of about 2000 childhood hematologic malignancies per year, according to statistics for our country, but only 594 cases were detected in 2018. Among those, 372 cases were from Yangon Children's Hospital (YCH). 2 That gap between estimation and diagnosis indicates the need to improve outreach diagnosis activities.