Uganda Cancer Trust UK

“Cancer kills almost as many people in Africa as tuberculosis and half as many as malaria”
Cancer in Uganda is on the rise. People are living longer and developing a more western lifestyle with the associated bad habits – eating unhealthily, drinking and smoking. Only around 5% of the population seek professional medical treatment, making it difficult to understand the full picture.

The scale of the problem

Cancer kills almost as many people in Africa as tuberculosis and half as many as malaria, but has much less visibility. Diagnosis and treatment is more complicated and requires expensive equipment and drugs. More work needs to be done to understand the best way to spend limited resources – should the focus be on early diagnosis and screening programmes, better radiotherapy equipment, or new (and often expensive) drugs.

A comparison of Uganda and the UK/US

Population
Uganda: 31 Million
UK: 61 Million

Number of oncologists
Uganda: 1
UK: 324

Number of radiotherapy centres
Uganda: 1 old machine
UK: 60

Breast cancer diagnosis
Uganda: 95% of cases are already at an advanced stage when diagnosed
US: Approximately 15% are at an advanced stage when diagnosed

Breast cancer 5 year survival rates
Uganda: 32%
US: 81%