The woman before me is stoic, beautiful, and brightly dressed in a traditional Senegalese wrap. She is 37-years-old, married, and a mother to several children. Her name is Kankou. She is from Tambacounda, a city nearly 450km from Dakar, the capital of Senegal.
A few years ago she started getting fevers and went to a local clinic for help. They gave her medications to calm the fevers down, but they always came back. When her general health started to worsen, her family sent her to Dakar to get a proper diagnosis. A visit to Dr. Fatma at Hopital Dala Jamm and a PCR test confirmed it. Kankou had cancer – a rare form of leukemia called CML (chronic myeloid leukemia).
After her cancer diagnosis, Dr. Fatma referred Kankou to The Max Foundation so she could gain access to treatment through our drug donation programs – Max Access Solutions. She’s been receiving medication free-of-charge for almost a year now and her health has returned to normal. Kankou offers “a big thank you” to the partners, donors, and team members behind the program because, as she says, “I can see my kids grow.”
Though cancer medication is made available to Kankou free-of-charge, she still has to complete a 450km “last mile” journey in order to access it – and she does so every three months. Each time Kankou makes the journey from Tambacounda to Dakar, she spends a few days staying with her cousin (pictured on right) who lives in the capital city. In addition to playing host, her cousin also serves as translator during appointments because Kankou speaks a different dialect than the one spoken at the hospital. Even in best case scenarios where a cancer is correctly diagnosed and an effective medication is donated, unseen efforts like those made by Kankou and her cousin are still required for patients to actually access the treatment they need.
At The Max Foundation, we work to bridge gaps in cancer treatment access with Max Access Solutions: our comprehensive patient-centered model for drug donation. Thanks to the generosity of our pharmaceutical partners, the drugs themselves are made available at no cost, but an enormous amount of work is still required to bridge the “last mile” and make them accessible to people in need.
Those “last mile” efforts take many forms. For the patients we support, it’s often a recurring journey to and from a clinic or hospital. For our partners and team members, the “last mile” takes place in customs offices and at ministries of health, on bus-rides to laboratories and site visits to remote clinics. Most importantly, our “last mile” efforts take the form of patient support; working to educate local communities, provide close emotional support, and reduce the stigma surrounding cancer.
With help from supporters like you, we can continue to grow these “last mile” efforts and bridge the gaps in treatment access for people in Africa and beyond. Together, we can realize a world where everyone can face cancer with dignity and hope.
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.
The Max Foundation is joining Poptivism — a consumer-driven charitable giving program that sells unique PopSocket Grips and donates 50% of the sales of those PopGrips to support a nonprofit’s mission (that’s us!). Please consider purchasing one of our Poptivism PopGrips today! With each purchase, you’ll help expand access to lifesaving cancer treatment the world over.
Un Paso Max, meaning “Un Paso Mas” (One More Step) is a fitting name for a group led by cancer survivors who are willing to take an extra step to help others. Un Paso Max is the name of the CML and GIST patient association in the Dominican Republic. One can trace the origins of this group to a small meeting in 2008. It only took a bit of encouragement and support on the part of The Max Foundation to unlock the passion of a handful of courageous survivors in Santo Domingo, and the seed of a patient association was planted.
Providing dignity and hope for patients and their families is both challenging and rewarding.
