Delivery of Care
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…
Surviving childhood cancer in Africa: helping families stick with the treatment plan is key
Faced with poverty, low maternal education and fears about treatment effects, many families in sub-Saharan Africa are abandoning cancer treatment for children and young people, harming chances of survival. In Kenya and Zambia, for instance, treatments for childhood cancers are…
Precision care: supporting our patients starts with asking them what they want and need
Two weeks after receiving a brain tumour diagnosis, Martin was copied into an email from one of his healthcare team telling his GP that Martin was “understandably devastated by his diagnosis”. The words came as a shock. “My healthcare team…
Chemobrain: it’s real, it’s troublesome and it deserves more attention
Fiona Henderson was part way through her psychology degree when she received her breast cancer diagnosis. Right after treatments finished, she returned to her studies – initially without a problem. “Three or four months later, I really struggled. I was…
Beating the odds in colorectal cancer
Stefan Gijssels beat the odds in colorectal cancer. Diagnosed with a cancer of the colon in 2015, a laparoscopic surgery intended to remove what was thought to be a locally contained tumour revealed something much nastier. The cancer had pierced…
Evolution of the doctor-patient relationship: from ancient times to the personalised medicine era
The nature of the doctor–patient relationship has gone through various phases in history, based on the changing role of the physician in the community, as well as progress in medicine and increased choices of care, together with better-informed patients. Broadly…
Drugs shortages: ‘We parents of children with cancer are too exhausted to protest’
When it all started, Ioana Oprea did not have a spare moment to come to terms with what had happened ‒ to truly take in the fact that her son Teodor had a brain tumour. In the autumn of 2020,…
Surviving childhood cancer: how we standardise care across Europe
When Lejla Kameric’s daughter was treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the twelve-year-old had to get through lumbar punctures without pain relief. “15 years ago in Bosnia, painful procedures and diagnostic activities were done without anaesthesia,” Kameric recalls. “Still now, young doctors…
Cancer and fertility preservation: it can be done… Can’t it?
“I was 26 when I was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in 2015. I knew before starting cancer treatment that it is possible to preserve fertility. But having been knocked flat by months of illness and still dazed by the diagnosis,…
Tailored exercise: a key element in personalised treatments and prevention
The expression ‘couch potato’ conjures up images of a worldly-wise, self-mocking type who leaves the rat-race to others, while happily cuddling up in front of the TV with snacks and drinks. Yet the consequences of such a lifestyle are dire.…