The breast cancer burden in lower income countries is even worse than we thought

Cancer surgeon Dr. Andre Ilbawi says he's haunted by the memory of a patient in Kenya whose suffering made him "want to scream so loud that you would lose your voice."

The woman was just 37 years old. But her breast cancer was so advanced that by the time Ilbawi encountered her in a hospital outpatient clinic in 2019, her death was imminent.

"The tumor had spread into her liver and her belly was filled with liquid," he recalls. "Her eyes were yellow. She was in so much pain, she couldn't even move her body. She was stuck in a wheelchair."

Ilbawi, who is the World Health Organization's lead expert on cancer, was in Kenya on a personal trip to volunteer in his capacity as a surgeon. He says what made witnessing the woman's situation all the more terrible was a galling thought: If she had