Cancer Moonshot contributes additional $100M to reduce cancer burden in Africa
The White House Cancer Moonshot is committing an additional $100 million to programs focused on reducing cancer burden in African countries.
The pledge was announced at the first White House Africa Cancer Care Forum on July 15. The newly promised money will add to the $300 million commitment announced at the 2022 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.
“The Biden Cancer Moonshot serves as a rallying call around which new partnerships have and continue to be forged,” Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, said at the White House forum.
About 5% of global oncology spending goes to low- and middle-income countries, where 70% of worldwide cancer deaths occur.
Cancer mortality and incidence are projected to increase over time. Worldwide, an estimated 20 million new cancer diagnoses occurred in 2022; in 2050, that number is expected to reach 35 million, according to the American Cancer Society’s Global Cancer Facts & Figures 5th Edition.
“Seventy percent of those new cases will occur in Africa,” said Hedvig Hricak, co-chair of the Lancet Oncology Commission on Medical Imaging and Nuclear Medicine and chair of the Department of Radiology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. “To make things even worse, Africa is two times higher in cancer mortality. And for some cancers—common cancers—it is four times higher.”
For the longest time, the reality or the stories that we had about Africa and the association of cancer was that cancer equals death. Over the last decade of practice, I’m happy to report that that is starting to change.
Miriam Mutebi
“Can we really sit back and look at those numbers and not do anything?” Hricak said at the White House meeting.
Programs funded through the Cancer Moonshot include Rays of Hope, administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That program will receive $6 million from the U.S. government in 2024, on top of $50 million received already.
Launched in Feb. 2022, Rays of Hope supports countries with little-to-no access to radiation therapy through high-impact, cost-effective, and sustainable interventions, including providing linear accelerators and training radio-oncologists, medical physicists, and technicians.
The program helps established hospitals in IAEA member states develop educational and research capabilities to become designated anchor centers, which can assist capacity building at neighboring regions’ health centers.
So far, 82 countries have requested support from Rays of Hope, and 42 of them are in Africa, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a pre-recorded talk shown at the forum.
African countries that have already benefited from Rays of Hope include Benin, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Niger, and Senegal, said Lisa Stevens, director of the IAEA Division of Programme of Action for Cancer Therapy.
The American Society of Clinical Oncology is also creating research and training opportunities as part of the Cancer Moonshot. Two years ago, ASCO established the Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Council so ASCO members there could inform the society of needs it could help fulfill, said Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of ASCO, during the forum’s panel discussion.
The regional council requested that ASCO address the lack of research grant opportunities in the region.
“We can’t compete with Americans for NCI grants or other grants. We don’t have as many opportunities, and the questions aren’t rated as being as important—questions about some things that are unique to cancer in Africa,” Gralow recalled council members saying.
ASCO received $1 million from Pfizer under one of the society’s grant programs to fund work that will improve quality of care for patients with breast cancer in sub-Saharan Africa.
“When we first asked for letters of intent, we got 185,” Gralow said. “We were hoping to fund 10 grants. That just shows you, right there, the need and the interest.”
The regional council has invited 34 applicants to submit full proposals and will review them in the fall.
These kinds of investments and on-the-ground work by African health professionals, policymakers, and advocates have been shifting narratives about cancer, said Miriam Mutebi, president of the African Organization for Research and Training in Cancer and a breast surgical oncologist and assistant professor in the Department of Surgery at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya.
Source: Livestream of White House Africa Cancer Care Forum
Over the past 10 years, Africa has seen an uptick in National Cancer Control Plans, public health programs aimed at reducing cancer incidence and mortality and improving quality of life. These plans have formed the bedrock for creating National Cancer Control Strategies; Kenya’s strategy, for instance, led to the regionalization of cancer centers, allowing patients to receive care closer to home, Mutebi said.
Can we really sit back and look at those numbers and not do anything?
Hedvig Hricak
Africa’s cancer care workforce as well as a grassroots advocacy movement to raise cancer awareness, reduce cancer stigma, and support patients have been growing in recent years, Mutebi said.
“For the longest time, the reality or the stories that we had about Africa and the association of cancer was that cancer equals death,” Mutebi said. “Over the last decade of practice, I’m happy to report that that is starting to change.”
