ALATRO – Ibero Latin American Society of Therapeutic Radiation Oncology – congregates professionals from 44 countries of Latin America (LA)and the Caribean as well as spanish and portuguese speaking north american and european profesionals. It represents the Radiation Oncology practise of a region of 22,5million Km2 with a population of 550million people. Spanish and portuguese are the predominant language (97%)
The countries present many contrasts and diversities on culture, political situation, development level and health problems. LA is a large and complex region with population and life expectance that will be very similar to the one in Europe on the next 20 years.
Cancer is a growing public health problem and serious deficits on cancer care have been identified, with professional and equipments needs, according to specific characteristics of each country.
On the last 10 years we have observed an insuficient but clear tendency of an increase in the number of linear accelerators, HDR brachytherapy and 3D planning systems. The human resources on all categories – Radiation Oncologists, Medical Phisicists and Tecnologists – are increasing too, reserving ALATRO an important paper on conducting activities to improve Radiation Oncology in Latin America.
During the 1st ALATRO Congress, 4-7 December 2007, in Uruguay, ten main topics were discussed and defined as the “Acta of Montevideo”, a master line for ALATRO activities: Improvement of a QA program and control, Actualization of Technical Documents, Guidelines for equipment maintenance and adquisition, Professional actualization program, Guidelines for RT integration in the treatment of the most common cancer types, Development of audit programs, Increase information about RT, Survey of centers, professionals and equipments (DIRAC), Integration with national and international organizations and scientific societies, Improvement of ALATRO web-page. All these topics are in permanent attention and care by ALATRO together with a constant colaboration with many others sister-societies and instituitions.