Young cancer patients in poor countries get a boost (Wall Street Journal - September 26, 2018) "Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston has focused on sub-Saharan Africa, where every year more than 100,000 children get cancer and 90% of them die, says David Poplack, a professor of pediatric oncology at Baylor College of Medicine. The initiative he started in 2016 targets three countries: Malawi, Botswana and Uganda—a nation of more than 44 million that two years ago didn’t have a single pediatric oncologist, Dr. Poplack says. A priority of the program, called Global HOPE, is training local pediatricians to become pediatric oncologists. These countries are taking so-called Centers of Excellence—clinics created during the AIDS epidemic—and expanding them to diagnose and treat children with cancer.
Before his program, Dr. Poplack says, in Uganda, “70% of the children who came to the hospital died in the first month.” Now, “85% are surviving one month and over 50% are surviving more than a year and a half.”
