All children must have access to cancer treatment – Top child cancer expert
“Global oncology” is a term increasingly used by world’s leading doctors to recognize a dire need to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment across the world. Most cancers are predicted to happen in the developing world – leading medical experts recognize and promote opportunities to improve cancer therapies around the world.
Is there any question that I should have asked but didn’t ask? Is there any topic that you’d like to talk about or feel that it’s important in your research, in your life and work? Well, maybe this is about something else. You know, we are talking about – I talked about lots of advances in cancer therapy, curing 90% of leukemia, et cetera. But we have to remember that the majority of children in the world are not so lucky. And they don’t have access to this advanced cancer therapy. We at Schneider here, we get many patients from around the world, for example, from Russia or from Eastern Europe. We train physicians, for example, physicians from China that we train. We are going to form a strong collaboration with some institutions in India. In three weeks from now I’ll be visiting the cancer center near Kampala in Uganda and we hope, maybe with some other child cancer programs like Professor David Poplack’s program of global oncology, or maybe together with – I’m on the executive board of the European Hematology Association. So we have also such a global child cancer treatment program. So I believe that we should invest more in curing child cancer for the children of the world, and not of the lucky children. I mean, it’s not lucky to have a child with cancer, it’s very bad luck, but then it’s better if you have access to therapies like in Schneider. So I hope that we can in Schnieder open our doors both to children and physicians who treat children who are not so lucky to be born in an affluent society like we are. Clearly, the diseases have no borders. So the medical knowledge and the availability of treatment – difficult as the it is – should transcend country borders as well. – Exactly! Dr. Anton Titov, MD Professor Izraeli, thank you very much for this very wonderful and detailed discussion and we’ll look forward to hearing more about your cancer research and treatment and, of course, your very important work. Thank you very much! – My pleasure!