As the Year Ends, What Did We Choose to Fund? |
As the year draws to a close, I find myself thinking about what lingers after the headlines fade.
I am thinking about the corridors of a cancer conference in Tunisia, where doctors, nurses, scientists, students, and patients from across Africa gathered with a shared purpose: to reduce the burden of cancer in places too often overlooked. In conversation after conversation, I heard stories of ingenuity and quiet endurance; clinicians delivering chemotherapy with limited supplies, researchers building cancer registries on borrowed computers, patients selling what little they own to stay alive.
One young oncologist from Rwanda told me he is learning to speak differently with his patients about cancer. Not just about treatment protocols, but about fear, dignity, and hope. He explained how language itself can heal, how empathy can ease suffering even when resources are scarce. I called him the prophet—not because he predicted outcomes, but because he understood that healing begins with trust.
A breast cancer survivor from Gaza spoke of women forced to leave home in search of treatment, only to face drug shortages and fractured care across borders. Their struggle is not only against disease, but against politics and geography that interrupt therapy and shorten lives.
If the year ahead is to mean progress, it will depend on whether we choose to align wealth with wisdom and urgency with solidarity.
These stories stayed with me when I returned home; and when I read, almost casually, about tens of millions of dollars spent to influence a single political race in New York City. I could not stop doing the math. How many nurses could that money train? How many pathology labs could it equip? How many mothers could it help live long enough to watch their children grow?
We live in a moment when the science to dramatically reduce cancer and other noncommunicable diseases already exists. Prevention works. Diagnostics work. Treatment works. Yet survival remains a cruel lottery of birth. A child with leukemia in Boston, Heidelberg, or Tokyo has more than an 80% chance of survival. The same child in Kampala, Dhaka, Sana’a, or