14. The Transformative Perspective: Pediatric oncology prioritization in health systems with Dr. Nickhill Bhakta

The Transformative Perspective

In the last few months, evidence has emerged that pediatric cancer is more common, more deadly, and responsible for a much larger proportion of the global burden of disease than we previously believed. Moreover, recent publications show that pediatric oncology is not only possible to treat in low-resource countries with risk-adapted protocols, but cost-effective to treat as well. Taken together, this evidence transforms how a developing healthcare system should see pediatric cancer – from a set of rare diseases that are difficult to treat to one of the largest drivers of pediatric disease burden for which cost-effective treatments already exist.

Dr. Nickhill Bhakta is a physician at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the Department of Global Pediatric Medicine. His research interests include estimation of global pediatric oncology disease burden, epidemiology, and assessment of economic consequences of treatment. On this episode of the GHCC podcast, we discuss several papers he recently helped published that contribute to the expanding vision of pediatric oncology’s importance in global health.