Radiotherapy for everyone who needs it by 2040
Half of cancer patients need radiotherapy and most of the world cannot get it. Commit to low-cost machines, automated planning and trained staff so that access is universal by 2040.
The Lancet Oncology Commission estimated enormous unmet radiotherapy need in low- and middle-income countries, with many countries having no machine at all. Barriers are capital cost, maintenance, physics and oncologist workforce, and planning complexity. The proposal is a coordinated programme: purpose-designed low-cost, low-maintenance linear accelerators for harsh environments (the CERN-STFC-ICEC effort), AI-automated contouring and planning with remote quality assurance, task-shifted training curricula, and pooled procurement and financing through IAEA Rays of Hope and development banks, with a public dashboard of machines per million and treatment gap by country.
- Most of the world has almost no cancer care · Seven in ten cancer deaths happen in low- and middle-income countries, where radiotherapy, pathology, surgery and drugs are scarce.
- Not enough oncologists, nurses, pathologists, physicists · The number of people with cancer is rising faster than the workforce trained to treat them.
- Surgery and radiotherapy cure most, get least · Surgery and radiotherapy cure more people than drugs do, but attract a fraction of the research investment.