MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE APPLICATION TO CANCER-VARIANT MORTALITY RATES IN SELECTED WEST AFRICAN COUNTRIES

Abstract

The menace of cancer, which has sent many to untimely deaths globally in the 21^st century, lives with us today. This study compared the reported death rates from five selected West African countries over nine different types of cancer, excluding all sexually related types. The data was acquired from Kaggle.com, covering the period from 1990 to 2019, and contained various cancer types; however, the study considered only nine different types from the five selected West African countries. The Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was adopted for the analysis and comparison of cancer-variant mortality rates. The results showed a significant difference in the mean vectors of the cancer-variant mortality rates, with Côte d’Ivoire consistently higher and Nigeria consistently lower (p < 0.05). It was therefore concluded that cancer-variant mortality rates in West African countries, as low-income countries, are still moderate and that efforts need to be made to reverse the rise observed in certain variants while improving on policies to keep those declining on the drop.