Why these cancer patients face a lonely fight
Cancer patients in Nigeria face significant barriers to treatment, including limited access to chemotherapy and diagnostic delays. With cancer rates projected to rise sharply in sub-Saharan Africa, the healthcare infrastructure is struggling to keep pace with the growing demand.
Why it matters
It underscores the widening global health inequality gap as cancer burdens shift toward developing nations with limited medical resources.
When Titilayo found a lump in her left breast, it felt like a death sentence.
"My world was crumbling," she says. "I had no hope, I had no life."
Titilayo — who asked NPR to only share her first name in order to speak openly about her cancer and its impact on her life — lives in a small city in southern Nigeria. To find out if the lump was malignant, she had to wait for weeks for a biopsy sample to be sent to Abuja, Nigeria's capital city.
When she got the news that the lump was cancerous, the doctor recommended that she undergo a mastectomy and multiple rounds of chemotherapy.
But the chemotherapy infusions she needed weren't always available where she lived, requiring her to find them in another state and bring them to the hospital.
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