Seattle’s Fred Hutch to help build cancer clinic in Uganda
Father cares for child with Burkitt's lymphoma
Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center will help build a new cancer clinic and training facility in Uganda to target cancers caused by infections.
Many common cancers, including cancers of the liver, stomach and cervix, are known to be caused by viral or bacterial infections.
Indeed, the World Health Organization estimates that chronic infections cause more than one in five of all cancers in world.
The new facility is an outgrowth of a collaboration that started in 2004 between the Hutchinson Center and the Uganda Cancer Institute in Kampala, Uganda’s capital city.
The research by the program has shown that many of the infectious diseases that lead to cancer can be treated at relatively low cost.
For example, the program has determined that 85 percent of cases of a virus-associated lymphoma common among children in East Africa, called Burkitt’s lymphoma, can be cured for less than $600 a case.
In addition to providing treatment and conducting research, the new program will also provide training to both American and Ugandan physicians and scientists.
An initial grant of $500,000 for the new facility, which will be called the Uganda Program on Infectious Diseases Clinic and Training Center, will come from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) American Schools and Hospitals Abroad program.
Ultimately $1.4 million will be needed to complete the facility and an adjacent clinical and laboratory research building.
The Uganda Cancer Institute was founded in 1967 in collaboration with the U.S. National Cancer Institute but has fallen into disrepair after several decades of political turmoil.
When the new center is completed, the Ugandan Ministry of Health has pledged to provide $1.8 to renovate and repurpose the Institute’s remaining buildings.
In addition, the Hutchinson Center has committed $400,000 to construct new laboratory space for molecular diagnostics to support the new clinic and training center.
Over the next five years Hutchinson Center faculty will rotate through the Ugandan program providing train and conducting research in oncology, infectious disease and epidemiology.
The new program will be co-directed by Dr. Corey Casper of the Hutchinson Center and Dr. Jackson Orem, director of the Uganda Cancer Institute.
PHOTO CREDITS: Rob Gipman Uganda Program on Cancer and Infectious Diseases
Category: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Global Health Seattle
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