Moving Mountains

Something momentous happened quietly 3 weeks ago. One weekend brought together people from all over the continent, and outside it. And all we talked about was brain and spinal cord tumours. Morbid stuff, but necessary fact of life. The more problems we have solved medically, the farther the solution to the cancer question has seemed.  

And for us on this side of the world, who have not really owned the answers to the difficult health questions, cancer solutions are even more remote. The complex problems of health, demand the sequence of observation, record-keeping, pattern- discovery and theorisation, and repeat. This process has unlocked the greatest mysteries over decades, and guaranteed that we are in a much better place in 2022 in our struggle against disease than we were in 1922.  

The people who spoke at SNOSSA Accra 2022 have been practitioners of this process in an environment which grinds negatively against them. There were professors who had made names pushing for better ways of treating cancer, young surgeons chipping away at cancer challenges in small hospitals all over Africa plagued with the problems that only Africa has. The Society for Neuro Oncology SubSaharan Africa, brought together an interesting mix of people in medical practice, families suffering the scourge of the disease, and policy makers.  

The venue was Ghana, the centre of the earth, the closest country to intersection of the prime meridian and the equator. It was symbolic, because the pronouncements that made at this conference, have ramifications that could spread like scientific ripples around the globe. Hopefully the voices that resonated in calls for scientific advancement in

SubSaharan Africa, will radiate continentally and push standards of cancer care higher. 

And big ripples were started. People are doing fantastic things in DR Congo, Ghana, Rwanda, Cote d’ivoire, Senegal, Nigeria and many more places on this continent and beyond. There are medical stalwarts pushing ahead quietly for the sake of their patients. It was a blessing to share a common platform with people of such innovation. It was inspiring to see what people were capable of doing in the face of health financing failures, complete deprivation and half-hearted health care strategy. And no voice was heard moaning only about incapacity, without a commitment to doing the best that could be done with whatever they had. 

As social media lit up with photos of these brave souls at the Center of the Earth, it was striking how young they were. I was reminded of what the future holds. This continent is still the youngest one. Ghana however, has the oldest people in the subregion, and this is not going change anytime soon. We missed the transition of disease from infectious to noncommunicable, and now as hemorrhagic CVA ravages our youth and takes people in the prime of life, we have no financial capacity, no human resource, no infrastructure to take care of the thousands of young people losing their livelihoods to stroke. And now as our community ages, I hope we do not miss the transition from non-communicable disease to diseases of cellular miscommunication. We can do nothing without strategy, and forward thinking. It is strategy in the developed world that has made HIV a non-fatal disease, and converted most strokes to a passing event with little residual disability, and made childhood cancer survivable almost 90% of the time.  

We dare not miss the next transition.