'Remarkable' progress in war on cancer, but SA needs to make treatment more accessible and affordable

Mike Wills (in for CapeTalk's John Maytham) interviews specialist surgeon Dr Liana Roodt, executive director of the Cancer Alliance of SA.

We see cancer everywhere - if you have not had the disease yourself, you are likely to know someone who has.

However, there has been remarkable progress in the war on cancer in terms of screening, surgery and drugs, reports a science-based article in The Economist.

At the same time, The Economist says this is specifically a trend in the developed world.

"Cancer is relative to age, and if you strip out longer lifespans, it becomes clear that in the rich world the early 1990s were an inflection point. Since then, the age-adjusted death rate has been falling, slowly but steadily, year after year. In America the rate is now about a third lower than in the 1990s."

The Economist 

Mike Wills asks cancer specialist Dr Liana Roodt for her response to the way the article frames the advances in beating cancer.

On a personal level, she's happy that the 'Big C' does not necessarily have to be a death sentence anymore, Dr Roodt says.

However, we need to look at this from a South African perspective in our own position as part of the developing world.

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She notes that there have been tremendous advances in how this disease is treated, how it is approached and very importantly, how treatment can be individuated. 

"Not too long ago, it was very much a spray gun approach - you throw things at the problem and hope something sticks, Now, we are at a point in history where we really have the tools and capacity to individualise treatment. So, YES, there is a lot of optimism in me for a lot of reasons."

Dr Liana Roodt, Executive Director - Cancer Alliance of SA

"There's ALSO the reserved part of me that's always cognizant that we are talking from a developing country perspective where a lot of these things are not as easily accessible as they should be and where we still face quite an uphill battle to offer patients what is available and - most importantly, to actually make it affordable."

Dr Liana Roodt, Executive Director - Cancer Alliance of SA

We need to bear in mind that South Africa is still at the very early steps of the care continuum, she says.

Dr Roodt looks at the stumbling blocks in our own healthcare system in detail - take a listen in the interview audio at the top of the article