Have faith in yourself, and look out for the bad man – reflections from Neil Ranasinghe’s involvement in LGCW

“My name is Neil Ranasinghe, and I recently attended London Global Cancer Week (LGCW).

LGCW is a week-long series of free, online, and in-person, multi-disciplinary meetings, covering the cancer continuum and acknowledging and addressing the challenge that cancer represents around the world.

This article is about about three sessions at London Global Cancer Week (LGCW) with which I was involved. By ‘involved’ I mean planning, organising, co-chairing, moderating and being the bad man, and how I felt doing things I don’t usually do.

The first session was Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group (CCLG) Global Child Cancer (GCC) – Data on ALL, Hodgkins, and Wilms from Partner countries – improvement over time. CCLG GCC is a group of clinicians in the UK that are involved in or interested in partnerships with hospitals in low-resource settings. Some of these partnerships are long standing and very effective.

The well-liked Dr. Mary Taj is chair of the group. I have been active in this group for well over 10 years and have worked with Mary on a number of projects. Unfortunately, Mary couldn’t make the meeting and asked me if I could chair.

I said I would and immediately started panicking, ‘Me? Chair a meeting? It will be terrible. I won’t be able to do it!’ Mary asked Dr. Emma Johnson to chair as well, so Emma Johnson and I co-chaired the meeting.

I had another panic two days before when I realized we had not got any slides or much in place, but a very calm Emma and I managed to put everything together, and the meeting went well.

We had presentations from Ghana, Malawi, Pakistan and India. The data demonstrated what great advances they are making in treating children with cancer, and in some cases with very few resources and serious challenges. There was a meaningful discussion after the presentations.

The global north needs to be careful using the traditional bad prognosis for childhood cancer in low-income countries. Survival rates are changing thanks to collaboration and local research. CCLG GCC has big plans for the group for 2025. Look out for an updated website, a newsletter, and practical advice for early career paediatric oncologists interested in global health.

Lesson 1. Be comfortable going out of your comfort zone, and say yes when someone trusts you to do something difficult.

The second session was International Society of Paediatric Oncology (SIOP) – Every facility, every country: SIOP Global Mapping of Paediatric Oncology Services. SIOP’s Global Mapping Programme is mapping every single institution in the world that treats children, this is encouraging collaboration, aiding advocacy and helping parents.

Maite Gorostegui showed the great progress that has been made since the start of the programme so far, the current status and future plans. Gilles Vassel presented the organisation of care and research in Europe (OCEAN), Alejandra Mendez, Vice-President of Childhood Cancer International (CCI) presented the great work CCI are doing identifying services to support children with cancer and their families.

I moderated the questions after the presentations, as I have spent much time working on the programme since 2018 and had helped Maite with the presentation. Over the years I have attended multiple conferences and sessions with moderators who effortlessly led the questions and answers, and I was not sure how I might measure up. Instead of being in the background, I could not hide this team.

Paradoxically, it was easy because I could direct questions to Guillermo Chantada and Eric Bouffet as they are so easy to work with, but I also felt more pressure as they are always so professional in these meetings.

The SIOP Global Mapping Programme goes from strength to strength. Data is being used in more and more meaningful ways in Latin America. China and India are coming onboard as are other countries across Asia.

Lesson 2. Don’t doubt yourself, especially when you have worked hard. Carefully observe the people you respect, and do what they do.

Finally, we had an all-day, in-person event at Parliament in London – Cancer Health Disparities: understanding the inequalities conundrum. This was an amazing event with so many experts talking about disparities and what they were doing to reduce inequalities. This event included different professions, different types of cancer, and different regions. Having the event in the House of Commons made it even more special.

A huge amount of work had gone into organising this event. We were concerned about running to schedule. Aruni Ghose and I volunteered to be timekeepers. It was an unpleasant job, as this meant interrupting a lot of speakers. We became “the badmen” but fortunately we managed to keep everything to time. Next year is going to be bigger and better with more discussions, questions and answers.

Lesson 3. It is energising and inspiring working with people that do so much such as Susie Stanway, Olubukola Ayodele, Katie Wakeham.

If you want to know any more about any of the above, please get in touch with me: [email protected].

Last but by no means least, a big thank you to Julie Waxgiser and Maite Gorostegui for helping me write this article.”

Other posts featuring Neil Ranasinghe.