United Nations Radio

PRES: The International Atomic Energy Agency is working closely with donors and in collaboration with the World Health Organization, to bring the silent cancer crisis in the developing world to the forefront. Chelsea Moore explains.

Moore: Currently, 27 African countries have no radiotherapy services, at all. With cancer on the rise in the developing world, the Director General of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, is using his Nobel Peace Prize money to promote PACT, the Program of Action for Cancer Therapy, furthering the agency's cancer prevention and treatment efforts. PACT Head Massoud Samiei, says health is a main focus for the IAEA.

Samiei: Well the IAEA per its mandate and as part of its statute actually has a role to bring the atomic energy for peace, health, and prosperity. So health is one area that from the beginning of the IAEA's creation has been an area of attention. For many years the IAEA has been working with developing countries to help them establish their first radiotherapy centers. So there has been training, expertise, and additional support provided to over a hundred countries. Nevertheless, this infrastructure is not sufficient enough to deal with the growing number of cancers.

Moore: PACT programs are far reaching and go beyond simply providing technology for treatment. IAEA Deputy Director Werner Burkart explains the increased emphasis on training and awareness, in addition to providing the hardware and critical to handling the crisis.

Burkart: What we can do best clearly is in the area of diagnosis, screening, then therapy and it is not about buying machinery and bringing the machinery down there. It's important, but what is more important is training people to understand their body-that's everybody, that's the whole population. Then training specialists to be able to diagnose properly, to treat properly, and this needs a lot of human capacity building and that is at least as important as providing hardware, machinery.

Moore: What once was considered a disease of the rich, conservative estimates project that within 20 years, 70% of cancer patients will be in developing countries. Peter Boyle, head of the International Prevention Research Institute believes, especially in the case of breast cancer, that the most important prevention is the development of infrastructure and resources.

Boyle: The situation in low resource countries today, it is very similar to what it was 5o or 60 years ago in the western countries. There was, at that time, a stigma associated with cancer.   There was no hope associated with the diagnosis of cancer, and that is the frame of mind of the women in the low resource countries just now. Something that we greatly need to change, women all over the world need to be aware that there is something we can do for breast cancer, but more importantly there has to be the infrastructure and resources in place to enable that to be done.

Moore: PACT and the WHO are calling on states and individuals to step up their efforts to combat the coming crisis.

Brinker: This isn't rocket science. It's about understanding and applying what we know. And this work isn't sexy, it's not glamorous, it is not the kind of science that gets people on fire. What it does do though is reach into the hearts and minds of people and now we have to reach into the pockets of huge governments, of government agencies, of people, to make the commitment and have the political will to make all of the treatment, screening, and diagnosis that we enjoy and have in developing countries, available in one form or another in low resource countries.

Moore: That was WHO Goodwill Ambassador Nancy Brinker.

For United Nations Radio, This is Chelsea Moore

Duration: 3'53"