{"entity":{"id":"hospital-simao-mendes","kind":"institution","name":"Hospital Nacional Simão Mendes","aka":["Simão Mendes National Hospital","HNSM"],"tldr":"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.","asOf":"2026-11-11","links":[{"label":"Djedjo et al., short-term breast surgical missions in Guinea-Bissau (JCO Global Oncology 2023)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1200/go.22.00317"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["breast-cancer"],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":["guinea-bissau-ministry-of-health"],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"city":"Bissau","country":"GW","lat":11.863,"lng":-15.581,"institutionType":"hospital","programs":["Breast surgery with visiting teams"]},"route":"/institutions/hospital-simao-mendes/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"breast-cancer","kind":"cancer","name":"Breast cancer (all types)","route":"/cancers/breast-cancer/"}],"institution":[{"id":"guinea-bissau-ministry-of-health","kind":"institution","name":"Ministério da Saúde Pública, Guiné-Bissau (MINSAP)","route":"/institutions/guinea-bissau-ministry-of-health/"}]}}