African Cancer Reform Convention
London, May 2007
The African Cancer Reform Convention was a meeting organized by AfrOx, with the assistance of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to discuss cancer control in Africa. It was held in London in May 2007. The aim of this meeting was to create, in partnership with African Ministers of Health, an evidence based, sustainable and resource appropriate action plan to enable the delivery of comprehensive cancer control to African countries. The meeting was chaired by Prof David Kerr, University of Oxford; the Rt Hon Alan Milburn, former UK Secretary of State for Health (1999-2003); and Sir John Arbuthnott, Chairman, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.
The meeting was attended by over 120 delegates including:
- 19 African Health Ministers or their representatives (Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, Cape Verde, Egypt, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Lesotho, Libya, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zambia) and Yemen;
- The World Health Organization;
- The World Bank;
- The African Development Bank;
- Leading African doctors and health professionals;
- All the major international healthcare organisations and charities:
African Organisation for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC); African Palliative Care Association (APCA); American Cancer Society (ACS); AXIOS International; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Breakthrough Breast Cancer; Cancer Research UK (CR UK); European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO); Global Health Workforce Alliance (GHWA); Help the Hospices; International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC); International Network for Cancer Treatment and Research (INCTR); International Union Against Cancer (UICC); International Society of Paediatric Oncology (SIOP); Maggie’s Centres; Medical Knowledge Institute (MKI); Medical Research Council, UK (MRC); National Cancer Institute, US (NCI); National Cancer Research Institute, UK (NCRI), Organisation of European Cancer Institutes (OECI), Oxfam, Princess Nikky Breast Cancer Foundation, Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET); and UK Oncology Nursing Society (UKONS);
- Members of the UK Parliament;
- World-leading oncologists;
- The pharmaceutical industry;
- GlaxoSmithKline; and
- Investment bankers.
Outcomes
Some of the startling findings at the meeting included:
- In some African languages, no word exists for cancer.
- Cancer sufferers, when diagnosed, face stigmatisation in many African countries.
- A diagnosis of cancer is equated with an inescapable and painful death.
- The majority of attending nations have no elements of a cancer plan.
Given the extraordinary financial pressures on all African Health Ministries, the most important questions that this meeting posed were:
- Does your government recognise the growing cancer problem?
- Does your government want to develop cancer control programmes as a matter of urgency?”
The African health ministers and their representatives who were present at the meeting stated unanimously that they recognise the explosion in cancer incidence, that they would welcome the support of the international oncology community in tackling the growing cancer epidemic but that in order to deliver comprehensive cancer control to Africa we must integrate with existing programmes that are tackling AIDS, malaria and TB.
The African Cancer Reform Convention gave a clear and positive message that the time for concerted action against cancer in Africa had come. It lays to rest the myth that the only health priorities in Africa are infectious disease. Although each of the Health Ministries recognized the need to develop national cancer plans, they requested that these be broken down into deliverable workstreams that would cover the spectrum of necessary activity in well-defined work programmes. These must be managed in partnerships forged between the African Health Ministries, NGOs, the pharmaceutical industry and international cancer communities.
The main output from the meeting was the London Declaration, a document which aims to raise awareness of the magnitude of the cancer burden in Africa and calls for immediate action to bring comprehensive cancer care to African countries…>>>MORE