Professor Isabel Dos Santos Silva’s retirement lecture: Mapping breast cancer patient journeys in sub-Saharan Africa
Mapping breast cancer patient journeys in sub-Saharan Africa: Findings and policy implications from the ABC-DO multi country prospective study by Professor Isabel Dos Santos Silva
Please join us to celebrate and commiserate Professor Isabel Dos Santos Silva’s retirement after many decades of service to LSHTM. The event will feature a lecture by Isabel, in which she will share reflections on her work, followed by a reception in the Pumphandle Social Cafe & Courtyard from 18:30.
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and its incidence is projected to rise sharply in the coming decades due to population growth, ageing, and the adoption of lifestyles associated with higher risk. Because primary prevention options remain limited, this increase is largely unavoidable. Yet breast cancer is highly curable when detected early and treated promptly with appropriate multimodal care. Despite this, earlier estimates – mostly based on low quality data – have consistently shown that survival in SSA is much lower than in high income countries.
The ABC-DO study was established to dissect, for the first time, the entire breast cancer patient journey in SSA and to identify proximal and distal enablers and barriers to early diagnosis, treatment uptake and completion, and ultimately survival. It is a large, multidimensional prospective cohort conducted across five SSA countries – Namibia, Uganda, Nigeria, Zambia, and South Africa – selected to reflect the region’s diverse breast cancer transitions, socioeconomic levels, and healthcare systems. Participants were followed every three months for more than seven years to allow in depth examination of long term survival and survivorship after a breast cancer diagnosis, and to investigate their sociodemographic, geospatial, clinical, and biological determinants. The study was implemented via a specifically tailored health application to facilitate study management, ensure collection of high quality standardised data, and minimise losses to follow up (a critical flaw of previous survival studies in the region).
In this lecture, Professor Isabel Dos Santos Silva will present the key findings from the ABC-DO study and discuss how they are informing national and global cancer control policies aimed at improving breast cancer outcomes.
Speaker
Professor Isabel Dos Santos Silva
Isabel Dos Santos Silva is an Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology at LSHTM. She joined the School in 1989, after completing a medical degree at the Universidade Classica de Lisbon, Portugal, followed by a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of London. Her research has focused on cancer epidemiology and control in both high-income and low- and middle-income countries, including major collaborative studies on breast cancer survival in sub-Saharan Africa and socio-economic and ethnic disparities in cancer outcomes in Brazil. Professor Dos Santos Silva has taught in a large number of courses at the School and overseas, alongside supervising MSc and PhD students and authoring the textbook Cancer Epidemiology: Principles and Methods.
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