Dear Friends,

Today, we join the World Health Organization (WHO) and the global community to mark International Childhood Cancer Day, which highlights campaigns to promote early detection of childhood cancers as well as the progress of the WHO’s Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer (GICC).

As Ethiopia looks forward to becoming a participating country in the Global Initiative, we spotlight the important progress that our partners have made in expanding access to pediatric cancer care through a three-year grant from Sanofi’s Foundation S in 2023. With co-funding from Aslan, the project will establish nine satellite clinics throughout the country that will be mentored by the existing comprehensive pediatric cancer programs in Addis Ababa, Jimma, and Gondar.

Both the clinic sites and the established pediatric cancer programs have hit the ground running. In phase one of the grant, the project’s task force performed baseline capacity assessments, developed training modules, and worked with government authorities to quantify and order chemotherapy and other essential medicines.

 In late December – months ahead of schedule – each of the mentor programs conducted an interactive training of the pediatricians and nurses who will staff their referral satellites. With knowledge of both basic and advanced topics in pediatric cancer care, clinic staff are now well prepared to welcome their first patients in the coming months.

Through building pediatric cancer capacity outside the country's major urban centers, this project will reduce the prodigious travel burden faced by pediatric cancer patients and their families and thus address a major factor in treatment abandonment. We congratulate our partners for their exceptional leadership and for their efforts to change the lives and outcomes of Ethiopian children with cancer by making much of their care available closer to home.

The Aslan Project

4315 50th Street NW

Suite 100 

Washington, DC 20016

[email protected]