Tackling Africa’s silent disease
Cancer could kill eleven million Africans in 2020. What practical steps can we take now to prevent this from happening?
CANCER kills more African people than
HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined,
according to World Health Organization
(WHO) statistics. This little-known
and very disturbing fact becomes bleaker still
when the standard of cancer diagnosis and
treatment in most African countries is considered.
For example, every 10 minutes an African
woman dies of cervical cancer.
The majority of children who develop cancer
in Africa receive no curative therapy, and
many receive no supportive or palliative care
either. Ghana, a country of more than 23 million
people, has only four oncologists to diagnose
and treat cancer patients. Cancer is the
silent scourge of Africa, indeed of the whole
developing world. WHO estimates that if we
don’t take act now, more than eleven million
Africans may die of cancer in 2020.
Can we prevent this from happening? Absolutely.
Recently at the World Economic Forum
on Africa summit in Cape Town, I was
one of the initiators of a session to discuss
cancer and other non-communicable diseases
in Africa. Several of the speakers pointed
out that raising awareness of cancer and taking
preventive measures such as campaigns
against tobacco smoking could save hundreds
of thousands of lives in Africa.
To follow up on the Africa summit, a private-
public coalition of international NGOs,
cancer centres, governments, and biopharma
companies, as well as WHO, is being set up
and will be facilitated by the World Economic
Forum in Geneva. This group will develop
a broad partnership to improve cancer care
in Africa and especially to work on tobacco
control. As a start, we are discussing potential
projects with the Minister of Health of
Rwanda, Dr. Richard Sezibera, and we hope
that our work in Rwanda can serve as a model
for other countries in Africa. Dr. Sezibera
points to the following challenges in Rwanda
for cancer care:
- The biggest challenge is in cancer diagnostics. There are almost no specialised cancer physicians and/or surgeons in any subspecialty in the field.
- Laboratories are inadequate both to enable early diagnosis, and monitor treatment.
- There is a lack of awareness among the health workforce and general population about both the scale of the problem and strategies for prevention.
-
Financing for communicable diseases is a
major challenge.
Therefore, potentials areas of collaboration for improving cancer care may include: - Establishing a centre for cancer research, diagnosis and treatment.
- Health workforce training, including specialised training for Rwandan physicians, surgeons, pathologists, etc.
- Awareness raising and prevention strategies.
- Thinking through appropriate financing mechanisms for cancers in resource challenged environments.
- The appropriate use of technology both for research, diagnosis, treatment and training.
Two concrete projects that will likely proceed are a tobacco control initiative in Rwanda and a program for training health personnel in early diagnosis of cancer. We are also planning to make a health education movie to create awareness of cancer as a hidden epidemic in Africa, and to show what each individual can do to prevent cancer and other non-communicable diseases.
Our vision for cancer control in Africa is to provide individual countries with the technical, policy and financial support to develop programs. African governments must be the driving force behind implementing cancer control in their countries with support at every level provided by the international alliance and funds provided by governments and private donors. Only in this way can achievable and sustainable cancer care in African countries be developed.
Oslo Cancer Cluster will make a commitment to the global fight against cancer at The LIVESTRONG Global Cancer Summit in Dublin 24th-26th of August. If you would like to get involved you can contact LIVESTRONG, the American Cancer Society, AfrOx, or Oslo Cancer Cluster.
BJARTE REVE
CEO of Oslo Cancer Cluster
This text was first published in The Scientist,
30th June 2009.
