Tackling Africa's silent disease

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.

An outpatient waiting room in a hospital in northern Uganda Image: Wikimedia Commons

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 11 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 centers, 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 specialized 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 the 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 center for cancer research, diagnosis and treatment
  •  Health workforce training, including specialized 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

In the coming months we will explore the possibilities of concrete actions to support Rwanda in improving cancer care.

The partners involved in this new coalition are World Health Organization, AfrOx, the American Cancer Society, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, Oslo Cancer Cluster, Oslo University Hospital Cancer Centre, and the Norwegian Cancer Society, with the World Economic Forum acting as a facilitator. 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. You can reach me at bjarte.reve@radforsk.no.

Bjarte Reve is CEO of Oslo Cancer Cluster, Norway. He was appointed as a Young Global Leader 2009 by the World Economic Forum, Geneva. He is on the board of AfrOx.


Related stories:

How to win the war against cancer
[5th November 2008]

Africa needs basic science
[July 2008]