Get a never before seen look at the chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) program in Tanzania! Over 20 years ago, we partnered with local healthcare professionals to provide treatment access for people living with cancer – at no cost to them, for as long as they need
it.
Africa Region Head Cathy Scheepers takes you to clinics in Moshi and Dar es Salaam, talking with patients, advocates, and physicians about their progress and how we can reach more people living with CML.
Stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes videos! Cathy and the Max team will be visiting several countries this year, including Lesotho, Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia.
Join our email list for updates and follow along on social media to join the conversation.
The Max Foundation is a leading global health nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating health equity. For 28 years, Max has pioneered practical, scalable, high-quality solutions to bring life-extending treatments and patient-centered health care to more than 100,000 people living with cancer and critical illness in low- and middle-income countries. Max believes in a world where all people can access high-impact medicines, where geography is not destiny, and where everyone can strive for health with dignity and with hope.
In all these years, through all of the struggle and emotional upheaval of her diagnosis, Hira remained her active and busy self. She never missed her daily routine of the wharf and the bazaar, nor did she let her work and routine come in the way of her managing her CML.
In 2011, Carmen developed a fever that lasted for weeks and began losing weight rapidly. After multiple doctors, tests, and misdiagnoses, she finally discovered she had chronic myeloid leukemia. Carmen feared her life was over. She even went so far as to sew her own funeral dress.
Eventually, Carmen learned that her cancer could be managed through oral treatment, but the costs were prohibitive. Luckily her physician was a Max Foundation partner. She was able to enroll in our access program for imatinib at no cost, and all seemed well for a few years—until, that is, she stopped responding to her initial treatment.
Getting a diagnosis and treatment for rare diseases is challenging, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Punam from Nepal endured months of symptoms before she found out she had paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH), a rare and debilitating disease that causes red blood cells to break apart. “I stayed in the hospital for 45 days before….
