Nuclear medicine in Africa: not a luxury, but a decision-making tool

A woman presents to a district hospital with a breast lump, is staged on clinical examination alone, and is found months later to have had metastatic disease from the outset. Her surgery bought her nothing. Scenarios of this kind are common across a continent where cancer incidence is rising and most cancers present late — in a meta-analysis of 83 studies, 77% of sub-Saharan African women with breast cancer presented with stage III or IV disease.1,2 In this setting, nuclear medicine is habitually discussed in terms of cost.