Focusing Cancer Resources After the Pandemic: Best Practices

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

I'm David Kerr, professor of cancer medicine at University of Oxford.

Today let's talk a little about a paper that I read recently in the BMJ Global Health. One of the senior co-authors, Professor Ala Alwan, is a dear friend. He's had a distinguished career as a public health expert, having served as a deputy director general of the WHO, and is a former minister of health and education in his home country of Iraq. He has health policy experience at the very highest level.

He and a group of colleagues have come together to recommend a package of care for low- and middle-income countries who are emerging from the travails of the COVID-19 pandemic. As these countries seek to repair their economies, as they seek to get health back on the front foot, these experts have recommended a series of 120 high-impact health measures across all of medicine that should be the basis for rebuilding health infrastructure.

The process they undertook is one that's been well validated by the WHO in the past. The things that they consider, the maxims and principles underpinning their recommendations, are to treat people equally and avoid any form of discrimination; to maximize the benefits produced by scarce resources in low- and middle-income countries, ie, saving the most individual lives or the greatest number of life-years by giving priority to patients likely to survive longest after treatment and focusing on those who are likely to benefit most; and finally, giving priority to the worst off in terms of poverty or in terms of health.