# Hospital Nacional Simão Mendes

Source: https://onco.cc/institutions/hospital-simao-mendes/  
OnCo record `hospital-simao-mendes` (Institution). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Guinea-Bissau's national referral hospital in Bissau. Visiting breast surgery teams have diagnosed and operated on women with breast cancer there, most of whom arrived with advanced disease.

## Summary

A report in JCO Global Oncology (2023), with a first author from the hospital's surgery department, describes three short surgical missions by a breast cancer team in one year at the Hospital Nacional Simão Mendes, a level A referral structure: 97 women were seen, with 21 excisional biopsies, 28 needle biopsies and five radical operations; 19 had invasive breast cancer at stage IV, few returned for treatment, and poor sample handling for lack of trained pathology technicians made 18 samples unusable. The authors call for a national cancer strategy built on local team training.

## Fields

- Kind: Institution
- Last checked: 2026-11-11
- Also known as: Simão Mendes National Hospital; HNSM
- City: Bissau, GW
- Type: hospital

## Sources

- Djedjo et al., short-term breast surgical missions in Guinea-Bissau (JCO Global Oncology 2023): https://doi.org/10.1200/go.22.00317

## Connected records

- cancers: [Breast cancer (all types)](https://onco.cc/cancers/breast-cancer/)
- institutions: [Ministério da Saúde Pública, Guiné-Bissau (MINSAP)](https://onco.cc/institutions/guinea-bissau-ministry-of-health/)

---
JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/hospital-simao-mendes.json