Bringing hope where there was little 

The treatment situation for children with cancer and blood disorders in Africa is dire, much like HIV and AIDS was in the 1990s, when there were too few doctors and too little access to quality medical treatment. In the U.S., more than 80 percent of children with cancer will survive; in sub-Saharan Africa, the mortality rate is estimated to be as high as 90 percent. This translates into thousands of children across the continent dying from cancer each year and results largely from to a severe shortage of expert physicians and other healthcare workers trained to diagnose and treat children with cancer.

Just as the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation's groundbreaking SECURE THE FUTURE program changed the course of pediatric HIV/AIDS in Africa by building an infrastructure that included trained healthcare providers and improved access to treatments, Global HOPE is addressing pediatric hematology and oncology. The initiative will create a network of healthcare professionals trained in pediatric cancer and blood disorders to establish Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Centers of Excellence that will serve as ‘flagship’ institutions for clinical care, education, research and healthcare management experience. 

Nurses are an integral part of any treatment continuum, but especially so in oncology. The training sessions for pediatric oncology nurses are designed to give them the tools to play a more prominent role in patient care.

Nurses in sub-Saharan Africa are often stretched thin. A shortage of trained healthcare professionals adds to the workload and means they must take on additional responsibilities, such as mixing their patients' chemotherapy.

 “Nurses are with patients for extended periods of time during the day and they see things that a doctor making rounds may not,” Aaron says. “Their challenges weren't about how to take care of their patients, but how to work around things that we take for granted.”

Practical, hands-on patient assessments reinforced what was taught in the classroom. Aaron recalls a case that immediately followed a lesson on what to expect toward the end of a patient's course of chemotherapy. 

“During our rounds with the class, a student noted that a five-year-old patient began shivering and was running a fever less than 30 minutes after receiving chemo.  Because of the recent training, that triggered a meeting with the oncologist and a whole treatment plan that prevented complications further down the road,” he relates.

Training like that builds confidence. “It empowered the nurses to make decisions and to speak up and call an issue to a doctor's attention when it was warranted,” Janet says. “They had a better idea of the larger role they could play in a patient's care, beyond what they already do.”

Despite the difference in geography and resources of their home hospitals, Aaron, Janet and the nurses in Malawi share many of the same concerns: having a child die unexpectedly, or having to deliver a poor prognosis or bad news to a family for example. “Knowing that those concerns are universal was very reassuring for the nurses in Africa to learn,” Janet explains.