I was moderating two sessions, a plenary session and a workshop dealing with the problem of breast cancer in the African continent which is a particularly devastating problem, it’s the single most common cancer on the continent affecting women in all the countries. The worst part of the problem is not only is the incidence high but the stage of disease that it’s discovered in is usually at a locally advanced or metastatic, in widely distributed parts of the body. So the problem isn’t just in terms of numbers, the problem is in terms of the stage of the disease which is advanced. So the world has come together, between the World Health Organisation, the American Cancer Society, which is committed to the global fight against cancer, and several other organisations have all come together to try to get a handle on this and to sponsor activities and conferences such as the African Organisation for Research and Training in Cancer to try to limit the burden of the disease.

What specific actions can be taken to tackle this?

Africa presents the problems of many other countries, low and middle income countries, what we call low and middle income countries in terms of limited resources and education and poverty, all of which lead to the fact that you don’t discover disease at a stage when it’s more easily treatable, let’s say. So Africa is really the fulcrum for all of these activities because there are so many countries that are classified in the low and middle income range. So there’s a unique problem and a unique opportunity to improve care for millions of people in all of the countries of Africa.

We need governmental support from these countries so that they understand that the non-communicable diseases, especially cancer, is a group of diseases that we can get a handle on. Let me give you an interesting statistic: if we don’t control tobacco, if the world, including Africa, doesn’t control tobacco use by the end of this century, so this is 2015, by the end of this century in another 85 years we will lose a billion people on this planet. Not one million, not one hundred million but one billion people if tobacco isn’t reigned in. So that gives you an idea of the multiplicity of this problem, not only is it a health issue primarily, but it’s an economic issue. Imagine if we lose a billion people by the end of the century. So that’s just one aspect of the issues.

So how do you get control of it? You get control by taking control. Governments need to band together, they need to go to the United Nations and use the UN, for instance, as a place where they can come to some kind of a conclusion as to how to stop the scourge of tobacco. Cervix cancer is a disease that can be prevented. Lung cancer is a disease that can be prevented. If we just did what we know works in terms of cancer we could prevent 50% of all the deaths in the world. Think about that, it’s an amazing number. 50% of the suffering could be alleviated if only the governments committed themselves to doing what’s right.