Breast Cancer Priorities in Limited-Resource Environments: The Price-Efficacy Dilemma in Cancer Care.

Breast cancer has become one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income countries, where 62% of the world's total new cases are diagnosed. Therefore, the productivity loss because of premature death resulting from female breast cancer is also on the rise. The major challenge in low- and middle-income countries is to reduce the proportion of women presenting with advanced-stage disease, a challenge unlikely to be overcome by adoption of expensive national mammography screening programs. Awareness and education campaigns should focus not only on patients and societies but also on policy makers to address and optimize breast cancer care. Adaptation of existing guidelines and prioritization according to local resources are essential to address the unique needs and overcome the unique barriers of each society to facilitate practical implementation and improve outcomes. Emphasis on the principle of a cancer groundshot in addressing value in cancer care is vital to improving access to therapies that are proven to work rather than chasing after new drugs or innovations of doubtful or marginal clinical benefit. Until we have drug-pricing interventions that take into account the local income of each society, we must acknowledge the fact that the delivery of cancer care will never be the same all around the world.

Resource-Stratified Guideline-Based Cancer Care Should Be a Priority: Historical Context and Examples of Success.

Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are shouldering most of the burden of the rapidly increasing cancer incidence and mortality worldwide, and this situation is projected to worsen in coming decades. Studies estimate that more than one million deaths could be prevented annually if all patients received high-quality care, but most LMICs lack the resources and infrastructure to adopt U.S. or European clinical oncology practice guidelines. Several organizations have developed resource-stratified guidelines (RSGs) to provide graduated and/or region-specific strategies for cancer diagnosis and treatment. The birth of these efforts traces to 2002, when the World Health Organization (WHO) called for tailoring cancer treatments to the level of available resources by country; the Breast Health Global Initiative (BHGI) formalized the first stratified guidelines for breast cancer shortly thereafter. Since then, multiple organizations including ASCO and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) have created guidelines customized for various cancer subtypes and regions. These RSGs offer roadmaps for policy makers, clinicians, and health care administrators in LMICs to design projects in implementation science that can gradually and strategically raise the quality of cancer care in their nation or region. Although the same resource limitations that complicate cancer care in these areas also pose barriers to data gathering and research, some countries have met the challenge and are improving cancer care using RSGs as a metric for success.