About 6,000 children are diagnosed with cancer in Ethiopia each year, and an estimated 80% of them die, the Ministry of Health told Anadolu Agency in 2019.
A hospital compound in Addis Ababa (Flickr user gigi4791 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
Kunzu Abdala, head of the ministry's Cancer Prevention and Control Department, said Ethiopia, already struggling with communicable diseases on limited resources, also records about 67,000 new adult cancer cases a year, with more than 47,000 deaths.
The ministry's National Childhood and Adolescent Cancer Control Plan (2019–2023) blamed the low cure rate on a lack of treatment capacity. It said children with cancer often receive incomplete, inadequate or no care, and those with incurable disease are sent home without palliative care. The country had too few facilities, too little chemotherapy and only six qualified specialists. Because childhood cancers are hard to recognise, many patients arrive at an advanced stage.
Much of the support for families comes from charities such as the Mathiwos Wondu Ethiopian Cancer Society (MWECS) in Addis Ababa. Its founder, Wondu Bekele, set it up after his son Mathiwos died of leukaemia following 26 months of treatment at Black Lion Hospital. The centre was supporting 117 children and breast cancer patients at the time, and had helped about 1,800 over the years.
Fourteen-year-old Osman Said from Wollo had received free chemotherapy at a government hospital for six years, while MWECS paid for his shelter, food and transport. Sixteen-year-old Furtina Mesaye needed a bone marrow transplant that could not be done in Ethiopia.
Abdala said the government plan aimed to improve early detection, diagnosis and treatment, expand treatment centres, train specialists and gradually raise survival to 80%.
Sources: Anadolu Agency