Priyanka Matti - Oncology

 I have been following the ongoing chemotherapy shortages that have hit cancer centers across the country. Over 70% of cancer centers have reported shortages of critical drugs like cisplatin and carboplatin, forcing doctors to delay treatment or find alternative therapies. Reading about patients having their treatment schedules disrupted made me think about how these access issues affect cancer care worldwide, often in much more devastating ways.

In most of sub-Saharan Africa, cancer patients don't worry about drug shortages because there simply aren't any oncology drugs to run short of. A course of chemotherapy that costs a few hundred dollars here can represent years of income for families there. Even when generic versions exist, the supply chains are so broken that rural hospitals might go months without basic cancer medications.

Seven out of ten cancer deaths happen in low and middle income countries. Not because their cancers are more aggressive, but because a cancer diagnosis there often means watching and waiting to die. Kids with leukemia that we could cure easily here don't make it past their first birthday.

But some countries are getting creative about this problem. Rwanda partnered with organizations, such as Partners in Health,  Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Rwanda Ministry of Health, to create a drug procurement system that actually works. They negotiated bulk pricing for essential cancer drugs and built a distribution network that reaches their rural hospitals. Their childhood cancer survival rates jumped from 20% to 60% in less than ten years.

Mexico has been piloting programs where they pool resources across regions, buying cancer drugs in larger quantities to get better prices. They also use telemedicine to make sure those drugs are prescribed correctly by connecting rural doctors with specialists in major cities.