Testimonials of Merck Foundation Alumni

“Ghana has a population of about 26 million with a cancer incidence rate of 109 per 100,000 people, and yet there is no single trained medical oncologist in the whole country. The duty of medical oncologist is handled by other specialties such as radiation oncologist, general surgeons, genitourinary surgeons, and hematologists among others. This makes the care of patients very difficult because these doctors are not formally trained as specialists in medical oncology.

In addition, there are only three paediatric oncologists in the whole country, and unfortunately our cancer cure rate is very low in children - it is about 20% whereas cure rates are approaching 80% in many developed parts of the world.

This huge human resource deficit in childhood cancer care was the main motivating factor for me to have applied for this training. I have benefitted immensely from this great opportunity given to our country by Merck Foundation. The Merck Foundation Paediatric Oncology Fellowship Program has added trained paediatric oncologists in Ghana, eased the workload, improved quality of patient care, added to the number of voices advocating for these patients and to the number of trainers of health workers delivering services including awareness creation. It has also strengthened the team effort around research and improved the paediatric cancer registry.”