Integrating cancer into crisis: a global vision for action from WHO and partners.

More than a billion people live in fragile, conflict-affected, and vulnerable settings requiring humanitarian support, where cancer is a substantial health issue. Despite its substantial effect on populations, cancer care remains underprioritised in emergency preparedness and response frameworks and humanitarian operational planning. This Policy Review summarises the perspectives and actionable recommendations from the First Global High-Level Technical Meeting on Non-communicable Diseases in Humanitarian Settings, with a focus on cancer.

The changing global landscape of national cancer control plans.

Global efforts to highlight cancer and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) as a growing burden were first raised in 2005 World Health Assembly Resolution 58.22 and reinforced with Resolution 70.12 and the Global NCD action plan in 2017.

Transplantation: A Priority in the Healthcare Agenda.

Background: In November 2023, in the context of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the Organization National de Transplante organized a global summit discussing global action in transplantation for the next decade. This article reports the recommendations supporting the need to prioritize transplantation in healthcare systems.

Methods: The working group investigated how transplantation addresses noncommunicable disease mortality, particularly related to kidney and liver disease.

Reflections on 20 years of the Wilms Africa project: Lessons learned and the way forward.

Wilms tumour (WT) is one of the common and curable childhood cancer types included in the Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer (GICC) to monitor progress. Local evidence is key to finding effective and sustainable solutions to local challenges to improve care and survival. Local evidence generated by the Wilms Africa project is summarised with recommendations for the future.

Premature mortality trends in 183 countries by cancer type, sex, WHO region, and World Bank income level in 2000-19: a retrospective, cross-sectional, population-based study.

Background: Cancer is a leading cause of mortality worldwide. By 2040, over 30 million new cancers are predicted, with the greatest cancer burden in low-income countries. In 2015, the UN passed the Sustainable Development Goal 3.

Global review of COVID-19 mitigation strategies and their impact on cancer service disruptions.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, countries adopted mitigation strategies to reduce disruptions to cancer services. We reviewed their implementation across health system functions and their impact on cancer diagnosis and care during the pandemic. A systematic search was performed using terms related to cancer and COVID-19.

Unification of Efforts to Improve Global Access to Cancer Therapeutics: Report From the 2022/2023 Access to Essential Cancer Medicines Stakeholder Summit.

Purpose: There is an urgent need to improve access to cancer therapy globally. Several independent initiatives have been undertaken to improve access to cancer medicines, and additional new initiatives are in development. Improved sharing of experiences and increased collaboration are needed to achieve substantial improvements in global access to essential oncology medicines.

Quality indicators in surgical oncology: systematic review of measures used to compare quality across hospitals.

Background: Measurement and reporting of quality indicators at the hospital level has been shown to improve outcomes and support patient choice. Although there are many studies validating individual quality indicators, there has been no systematic approach to understanding what quality indicators exist for surgical oncology and no standardization for their use. The aim of this study was to review quality indicators used to assess variation in quality in surgical oncology care across hospitals or regions.

The lived experience of people affected by cancer: A global cross-sectional survey protocol.

A diagnosis of cancer impacts the person's physical and mental health and the psychosocial and financial health of their caregivers. While data on the experience of living with cancer is available, there is a dearth of data from persons in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The perspectives of other impacted individuals also remain understudied (e.

Quality indicators for evaluating cancer care in low-income and middle-income country settings: a multinational modified Delphi study.

This Policy Review sourced opinions from experts in cancer care across low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) to build consensus around high-priority measures of care quality. A comprehensive list of quality indicators in medical, radiation, and surgical oncology was identified from systematic literature reviews. A modified Delphi study consisting of three 90-min workshops and two international electronic surveys integrating a global range of key clinical, policy, and research leaders was used to derive consensus on cancer quality indicators that would be both feasible to collect and were high priority for cancer care systems in LMICs.

Developing and sustaining high-quality care for children with cancer: the WHO Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer.

Cancer is a major public health concern, impacting nearly 20 million people each year, and it is responsible for 1 in 6 deaths worldwide. The burden of cancer is increasing rapidly, straining health systems that are unable to prevent and manage the disease. Childhood cancer constitutes a significant and relevant public health challenge; it was the ninth leading cause of childhood disease globally, according to findings by the Global Burden of Disease 2017 study.

Benefits, harms and cost-effectiveness of cervical screening, triage and treatment strategies for women in the general population.

In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a strategy to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem. To support the strategy, the WHO published updated cervical screening guidelines in 2021. To inform this update, we used an established modeling platform, Policy1-Cervix, to evaluate the impact of seven primary screening scenarios across 78 low- and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) for the general population of women.

Quality indicators for systemic anticancer therapy services: a systematic review of metrics used to compare quality across healthcare facilities.

Purpose: The number of systemic anticancer therapy (SACT) regimens has expanded rapidly over the last decade. There is a need to ensure quality of SACT delivery across cancer services and systems in different resource settings to reduce morbidity, mortality, and detrimental economic impact at individual and systems level. Existing literature on SACT focuses on treatment efficacy with few studies on quality or how SACT is delivered within routine care in comparison to radiation and surgical oncology.

Task Shifting and Task Sharing to Strengthen the Surgical Workforce in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review of the Existing Literature.

Background: A major constraint to surgical care delivery in low-resource settings is inadequate workforce availability. Surgical task shifting (TShifting) and task sharing (TSharing), in which non-surgeon clinicians (NSCs) are trained to perform select surgical procedures, have been proposed as one solution. However, patterns of safety and efficacy of surgical TShifting/TSharing are not well-established.

Advances in the Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer: implementation in Latin America and the Caribbean.

This report describes the status of childhood cancer control initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Progress between 2017 and 2023 is measured using the outcome indicators from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) childhood cancer logic model aligned with the World Health Organization Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer (GICC). This report also describes the advances, barriers, and facilitators for the implementation of the GICC at the Regional level.

The cost of inaction on physical inactivity to public health-care systems: a population-attributable fraction analysis.

Background: Physical inactivity is an important modifiable risk factor for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and mental health conditions. We aimed to estimate the public health-care costs associated with these diseases because of physical inactivity, which will help policy makers to prioritise investment in policy actions to promote and enable more people to be more active.

Methods: We used a population-attributable fraction formula to estimate the direct public health-care costs of NCDs and mental health conditions for 2020-30.

Global Breast Cancer Initiative: A platform to address the psycho-oncology of cancer in low- and middle-income countries for improving global breast cancer outcomes.

Background: Psycho-oncology is a clinical specialty in which the humanistic aspects of cancer diagnoses and treatment are addressed to reduce the psychological burden for patients and their caregivers to optimize patient participation, cancer outcomes and quality-of-life, which is especially critical in cultures where cancer is perceived as invariably fatal. Psycho-oncology programs face multiple barriers in low- and middle-income countries, including limited resource allocation and lack of training, both of which have been impediments to psycho-oncology programs becoming recognized as core competencies in cancer management and part of a standard medical curriculum.

Purpose: This paper discusses the role of the Global Breast Cancer Initiative (GBCI) in helping to overcome inequities in breast cancer care and improve clinical outcomes from a psycho-oncology perspective as a model for improved cancer care in limited resource settings.

Global and regional estimates of orphans attributed to maternal cancer mortality in 2020.

Despite women being disproportionally affected by cancer deaths at young ages, there are no global estimates of the resulting maternal orphans, who experience health and education disadvantages throughout their lives. We estimated the number of children who became maternal orphans in 2020 due to their mother dying from cancer in that year, for 185 countries worldwide and by cause of cancer-related death. Female cancer deaths-by country, cancer type and age (derived from GLOBOCAN estimates)-were multiplied by each woman's estimated number of children under the age of 18 years at the time of her death (fertility data were derived from United Nations World Population Prospects for birth cohort), accounting for child mortality and parity-cancer risk associations.