Cancer care in Africa is often framed in terms of scarcity: too few machines, specialists, and resources. While these gaps are real, they tell only part of the story. The deeper challenge lies in how our health systems are designed and for whom they are designed.
As a cancer surgeon and health-systems researcher, I see this reality weekly. Patients are not diagnosed late because they do not care; they are diagnosed late because the pathway to care is fragmented, expensive, and difficult to navigate. Delays begin long before diagnosis, shaped by income, geography, beliefs, and policy decisions that determine who can move through the system and who cannot.
