Senior doctors have called on the Government to strengthen its fight against cancer if it is to reduce high numbers of deaths caused by the disease.
Experts said the emirates need to co-ordinate more efficiently with each other, and make a concerted effort to compile accurate data about cancer in the UAE.
There are no national screening programmes for the disease, which is the third biggest cause of death after heart disease and road accidents. Doctors say the high mortality, partly due to late detection, should be evidence enough for authorities to start working together.
Dr Shaheenah Dawood, a senior oncologist and member of the Emirates Oncology Society, said there will continue to be high death rates if more is not done.
She spoke as the world marked the beginning of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the international campaign every October to raise awareness of the disease and generate cash to fight it. "Each emirate has a couple of their own campaigns but most of them are conducted only in the month of October," she said.
"But breast cancer occurs on any day at any time of the year." As a UAE national, Dr Dawood feels she is in a good position to speak openly about some of the challenges the country faces.
The guidelines used for cancer cases in the UAE are typically based on western standards - which, she says, are often inappropriate. In the UK, for example, all women aged between 50 and 70 are invited for a mammogram every three years.
In the UAE, although breast cancer usually occurs up to a decade earlier than in the West, Abu Dhabi is the only emirate with a comprehensive breast screening programme.
Emirati women over 40 are required to have a mammogram for their Thiqa insurance card. "Is it correct to just use policies from the UK or the States? No, but we don't have anything else," Dr Dawood said. "We cannot use a blanket approach any more, there is a lot more that needs to be done."
Without good, local data and anti-cancer strategies based on it, the country will "not know whether we are treating our patients appropriately or not", she said.
Dr Ghazi Tadmouri, assistant director of the Centre for Arab Genomic Studies, echoed her call. "Why don't we have a national strategy?" he said. "Because we don't have the research behind it."
Any data that exists is scant and often contradictory.
Breast cancer is the biggest killer of women in the UAE, accounting for 22.8 per cent of all cancer cases. About 412 people died of cancer in Abu Dhabi in 2008, 14 per cent of all deaths.
The 2008 Ministry of Health annual report, however, says that in 2007 there were only 674 cancer deaths across the whole country.
Data collected by individual hospitals is rarely collated nationally. When it is, there are sometimes clear discrepancies.
For example, there were 4,965 registered cancer cases in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Al Gharbia between 2000 and 2007, but according to the Dubai Health Authority there were only 1,310 in Dubai in the same period.
Dr Nigel Beejay, a colorectal specialist at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City working with the Health Authority-Abu Dhabi on its colorectal cancer screening pilot programme, said it was important for different emirates to learn from one another, acknowledging a "big difference between emirates".
The HAAD programme targets UAE nationals aged between 50 and 75. Groups are invited to educational seminars that explain the benefits of early screening. The programme, however, remains voluntary.
Dr Sanjay Jain, chairman of the haematology and oncology unit at Tawam Hospital, said many parts of the health system that dealt with cancer were "broken on may different levels" but he was confident they could be "fixed".
The hospital, which treats four in five of the country's cancer cases, receives referrals from every emirate.
Another problem, he said, was a lack of primary care, which at times was "woefully inadequate". This made it difficult for authorities to boost preventive care and collect relevant data.
"With some patients we have no family history because the primary health care is not there," said Dr Jain, who previously worked in the US.
"We really need to understand the demographics of this disease here. The country needs to focus on its health care more than anything else."
Dr Aly Razek, director of the Gulf International Cancer Centre in Abu Dhabi, said the culture of medical tourism was partly to blame for the gaps in data.
He said cancer had been on "the back burner" until five or six years ago because before that people went abroad for treatment.
Dr Razek said that despite its disjointed efforts he did not doubt the country's commitment to reducing the burden of cancer.
"The question is not whether the money is there, it is whether it is in the appropriate place," he said. "Without the data we will not know. We must work on this immediately."
munderwood@thenational.ae