Breaking new ground against cancer

In October, the Hutchinson Center, together with the Uganda Cancer Institute, broke ground for the construction of a cancer training and outpatient treatment facility in Kampala.

Ugandan Vice President Edward Ssekandi plants a tree to mark the future site of the Uganda Cancer Institute/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Clinic and Training Institute in Kampala.

“Through the collaboration between the Hutchinson Center and the Uganda Cancer Institute, we hope to develop new, low-cost prevention and treatment strategies that will not only stem the rising burden of cancer in sub-Saharan Africa but will benefit millions of people worldwide,” said Dr. Larry Corey, president and director of the Hutchinson Center.

“Our commitment in Uganda is to increase survival rates for common infection-caused cancers from 10 percent to 90 percent over the next three years while pursuing a unique research opportunity to find new ways to prevent infection-associated cancers, which will benefit cancer patients both in resource-poor and resource-rich regions,” he said.

The building will be the first comprehensive cancer center jointly constructed by U.S. and African cancer institutions in sub-Saharan Africa. The new facility will extend patient access to cancer diagnosis and research-based treatment. It will allow further study on the links between infectious diseases, such as HIV and Epstein-Barr virus, and cancers such as Kaposi sarcoma and the most common life-threatening malignancy among Ugandan children, Burkitt lymphoma.

“Cancer is increasingly recognized as an enormously important global health problem that kills more people worldwide than HIV, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and nearly two-thirds of these deaths are in the developing world,” Corey said.

“Sub-Saharan Africa has among the highest cancer rates in the world, and these rates appear to be increasing in association with the HIV epidemic,” he said.