Miriam Mutebi, Breast Surgical Oncologist, shared on LinkedIn:
“Why do we need a conference dedicated to cancer prevention?
Because knowing that cancer is preventable and organising our societies to prevent it are very different achievements.
The conversations at the DKFZ German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg last week, during and after my keynote, left me thinking about what this means for Africa.
Much of the ambition is shared: cleaner air, safe drinking water, affordable nutritious food, cities where people can walk and move safely. Public priorities with benefits across cancer and other noncommunicable diseases.
But shared ambition still needs local translation.
Prevention in our settings must address cancer-causing infections: HPV, hepatitis B, alongside changing commercial and environmental exposures. The approaches have to be grounded in how people actually live.
A particular highlight was connecting with young scientists from across Africa and internationally.
The poster discussions, from HPV self-sampling in Rwanda to cancer diagnosis during the pandemic in Morocco, showed exactly what locally grounded evidence looks like in practice. There was much to learn from their work and the questions they were asking.
What would it take to make prevention part of decisions about transport, housing, education and public spending?
How do we integrate it into existing services while making those services easier to reach?
I left DKFZ with new connections and a sharper question to bring home:
How do we make healthier lives possible before people ever need to enter a cancer clinic?
→ Thank you to the organisers and colleagues for conversations that continued well beyond the session.”
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