Inspire2Live focuses on the entire global patient journey from prevention to palliative care. We do so

• Prevention: Adopting a healthy lifestyle can prevent 50% of cancer cases.
• Early detection: Detecting cancer early means higher survival rates. Cancers are often diagnosed late stage, especially in low to middle-income countries, and this can mean a death penalty.
• Access to medicines: Making affordable treatments available for patients globally.
• Palliative care: Ensuring that patients have a good quality of life during the time they have left.

Getting cancer under control demands attention to all four pillars: prevention, early detection, access to medicines, and palliative care. Even the most robust early detection programmes will fail if patients delay seeking care until late stages. Similarly, preventive measures like vaccination campaigns require public awareness to achieve widespread adoption. The question is: which must come first?

Palliative care from a human perspective

Our ambassador, Professor Khama Rogo from Kenya offered a surprising yet thought-provoking answer: ‘Palliative care!’ Millions of people arrive worldwide at hospitals with advanced (stage 3 or 4) cancer. While patients in high-income countries may access medicines that extend life by one to two years, those in underserved countries have far fewer options. For most of these patients, palliative care is often the only thing left.

Professor Rogo also emphasized palliative care for another reason. From a human perspective, everyone deserves to die with dignity and providing patients with palliative care shows why prevention and early detection are so important. When citizens and governments witness the human cost of late-stage cancer, they better understand the critical need to change both personal behaviours and public health policies.

This perspective was eye-opening: by providing dignified end-of-life care to the most vulnerable, the urgent need for prevention and early detection becomes obvious. You have to be present with these people to truly understand – something I had missed, living in a privileged country with excellent healthcare.

Inspire2Live Palliative Care Working Group

In the Inspire2Live Palliative Care Working Group, we are dedicated to identifying and addressing the most pressing needs of cancer patients for whom no cure is possible. One of our current projects is a trial with lidocaine to take away the pain of cancer patients. Lidocaine is affordable, well-known, safe and globally available. It improves patients’ quality of life during the time they have left. We know it works but we want to prove it scientifically in a trial in Kenya.

Peter Kapitein
Patient Advocate, Inspire2Live