Some Malawi nurses have been with us in the U.S. on a Fulbright program.  Among them was Alice, our Southern Region Projects Officer. She reported increasing numbers of villagers with cancer — cervical cancer and Kaposi’s sarcoma in particular.  A shortage of ordinary pap tests and HIV-weakened immune systems account for much of this. The government hospitals can’t accommodate all the patients, so people with these cancers are frequently sent back to their villages.

Recently all GAIA nurses – from our mobile health clinics and our village coordinators group – were trained by the Malawi Health Ministry in cancer care.  Our nurse coordinators will in turn train the village caregivers.  Ordinarily such care might entail opioids for pain, but we do not handle those.

A typical anti-cancer drug in Malawi, vincristine, must be kept cold at the district hospital.  If we did not purchase a supply of this for patients from “our” villages their supply would run out after a few months.  So the people trek to the hospital and identify themselves as GAIA patients.  Then they receive the cancer medication from the hospital’s cold storage supply.

Without electricity to light them, and usually with only one window, the homes remain dark even during the day.  Patients sit outside when it is sunny, as you can see in the photo above, though the woman in this image may not be a cancer patient.

Looking back over the ten-plus years that we have worked in Africa, I can see how our tight focus on HIV broadened to include TB, malaria, women’s reproductive health in general, and now cancer.  This is because HIV is implicated in the other health challenges, and it is because our primary concern is the people – with whom these illnesses reside.

You all have been so wonderfully supportive of our work and we are all very grateful.

William Rankin