Delivery of Care
Expert cancer surgery: could VR help speed up and standardise training?
Spinal surgeon Bronek Boszczyk has said that training in complex surgery is like having to learn the violin during a full orchestral concert. The training revolves around closely supervised surgery on real patients in a real operating theatre – which…
Food insecurity: Why screening for access to nutrition should be part of cancer treatment everywhere
Sixteen-year-old Sahil Bacchav had just finished his tenth grade exams when he developed terrible headaches and a feeling that his nose was blocked. He was referred to King Edward Memorial Hospital, a municipal hospital in Mumbai, where he had his…
Cancer care in Ukraine, one year on
I make two appointments to speak to Anna Uzlova of Inspiration Family, a Kyiv-based foundation set up in September 2020 to support adult cancer patients. The first time the interview cannot take place because Uzlova is going to visit family…
Immunotherapy: outcomes of ultra low-dose trial offer hope for better global access
Doctors at the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai have shown that an ultra-low dose of the immunotherapy drug nivolumab significantly improves survival in patients with recurrent or newly diagnosed head and neck cancers. The findings of the single-centre phase III…
What do you say when your patient can’t stop worrying about recurrence? Here’s what you told us
It isn’t over when treatment’s over. Even if, as far as the clinician is concerned, therapy has been successful and the cancer is effectively ‘cured’, cancer patients often experience a nagging – sometimes devastating – fear that their cancer will…
HPV vaccination set to be rolled out across Turkey… with controversial exclusions
Turkey’s minister of health announced on 24th November that the government is planning to start an HPV vaccine rollout. “We will start vaccination with a designated group and gradually expand its scope,” said health minister Fahrettin Koca in a speech at…
Helping cancer patients preserve their fertility in one of Europe’s least supportive states
It was the end of the first pandemic summer, when Edyta, a 35-year-old active entrepreneur from Łódź, Poland, received an email informing her that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer metastasised to the lymph nodes. Naturally, her first thoughts…
Tackling cancer when there’s no functioning state: the Al-Amal model
Six years ago, Mada accompanied her daughter to the gynaecologist for an early pregnancy scan. Whilst she was there, the physician suggested Mada herself get a check-up. “The doctor at first thought I had a very large cyst on my…
Unicorns for Ukraine: mobilising to meet patients’ changing cancer care needs
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, consultant clinical oncologist Mohammed Hojouj put out a call for help: “Cancers do not stop growing because there is a war. But cancer patients stop being seen as a priority.” The story he…
India’s Lung Connect shows value of online cancer support in low-income settings
It was April 2020. Just a few weeks earlier, India had imposed a national lockdown – among the harshest in the world. Ramkrishna Bhadhury, 44, a farmer from a small village in Nalikul, West Bengal, was feeling increasingly dejected and…