In his final State of the Union address on January 12, 2015 before Congress, President Obama announced the US government initiative to find a cure for cancer, led by Vice President Joe Biden and fueled by an increased effort in (i) research and (ii) private sector/public sector collaboration.
With the increasing global incidence of cancer and the likelihood that there will be about 1.6 million Americans diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. alone this year, we ask why finding a cure for cancer by 2030, was not one of the ambitious Global Goals.
The Global Goals, aka – Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs) are a set of 17 goals that will guide global development over the next 15 years, adopted by the UN’s 193 Member States at an historic summit in September 2015.
We argue that, finding a cure for cancer, by 2030 it should be one of the Global Goals, alongside other targets of Goal 3, the Heath Goal.
The overall objective of Goal 3 of the SDGs is to ensure healthy lives and make significant strides in increasing life expectancy and reducing some of the world’s common killers. Cancer is without a doubt a common killer with available statistics showing that cancer killed 7.6 million persons in 2008 worldwide, with that figure likely to double to 13 million by 2030.
Cancer is also not just an American problem. According to the World Health Organization, WHO, cancer accounts for 13 percent of all deaths registered globally and 70 percent of that figure occurs in middle and low income countries.
Here in Nigeria, we have the highest incidences of cancer in Africa, with about 10,000 cancer deaths recorded annually while 250,000 new cases are recorded yearly. It is also worrisome that only 17 percent of African countries are said to have sufficiently funded cancer control programmes, while less than half of all countries in the world have functional plans to prevent the disease and provide treatment and care to patients.
The America Cancer Society’s Dr Otis Brawley speaking on President Obama’s announcement said that “it is a good time to do it” and that the field has obtained such critical mass of knowledge that “now we are ready”.
He also commented that Vice President Biden is the right man for the job, with a proven track record of being able to get Congress to stand with him on this issue: He helped get Congress to add $264 million to the National Cancer Institute’s budget in the 2016 spending bill, part of a $2 billion raise for the National Institutes of Health.
There are 12 targets for Goal 3 of the SDGs (the Health Goals). Target 10 states:
“Support the research and development of vaccines and medicines for the communicable and noncommunicable diseases that primarily affect developing countries…”
Cancer is a non-communicable disease and the new impetus to find a cure driven by the President of the United States could very well be given a further “global goal” push using Target 10 as the platform.
The goal to find a cure for cancer should not just be a national goal for America but a global goal for the world. Indeed the time is now.
– See more at: http://sdgsnigeria.news/president-obama-sets-a-new-global-goal/#sthash.j3DvEEVw.dpuf
