Every year, an estimated 400,000 children worldwide develop a form of cancer.
Five-year survival rates in high-income nations are typically over 80%, with an expected cure rate of near 100% for some cancers like retinoblastoma — a malignant eye tumor that strikes about 8,000 children annually.
The picture in low- and middle-income countries is far bleaker. The average five-year survival rate for children in these countries is less than 20%. That figure comes from a a 2023 study in The Lancet Oncology journal compiled by specialists from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and seven other academic institutions in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Chile and Guatemala.
This was an issue raised at the Union for International Cancer Control congress in Geneva this fall.
While there are plenty of medicines with a track record of effectiveness at curing children with cancer, many countries struggle to afford them. So they rely on cheaper copies called generics often made by manufacturers in India or China. But evidence compiled by academics in the U.S. and Canada as well as government institutions such as Colombia’s health authorities is increasingly showing that some generics are of dubious quality, contaminated or outright fake.
“There is a penalty which low- to middle-income countries face,” says Luke Thomas, CEO of the charity World Child Cancer. “They often get access to lower quality medicines or medicines without enough of the active ingredient, so effectively what’s being prescribed to children is hope and a death sentence, and that is just not acceptable.”
A distressing reaction to a drug
Consider folinic acid, otherwise known as leucovorin. It’s one of the most common medicines prescribed for childhood leukemia, which is diagnosed in more than 67,000 children yearly. The drug has two benefits: It can make chemotherapy more effective and can also reduce its side effects.
Yet with a month’s supply of leucovorin costing nearly $2,500, many underfunded hospitals turn to generic versions that cost as little as $139 per month.
Source: For a kid with cancer, where they live has a huge impact on whether they’ll survive
