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Prof. Manjit Dosanjh, ENLIGHT Coordinator CERN/University of Oxford

Biography:

Professor Manjit Dosanjh is the former senior advisor for medical applications at CERN and Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford.  She is the Project Leader for STELLA (Smart Technologies to Extend Lives with Linear Accelerators) for ICEC.  She holds a Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering from the UK and her professional efforts in the fields of biology and the medical applications of physics span more than 30 years, during which she has held positions in various academic and research institutions in Europe and the U.S., including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) at the University of California, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC) in Italy. She joined CERN in 2000 and focused on applying the technologies developed for particle physics to the life sciences domain and establishing multidisciplinary collaborative approaches for cancer treatment. Her work has included many initiatives to expand access to technology in Low Middle-Income Countries and she is on the board of ICEC (International Cancer Expert Corps) an NGO addressing cancer disparities.

Abstract: 

Radiation therapy (RT) is critical for the curative treatment or for palliation of symptoms due to cancer for over half of all cancer patients with the number of patients increasing with time. In the face of this growing burden there is a global shortage in access to RT, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where there is a shortage of RT equipment, staff, opportunities for education and training as well as  innovation in treatment technology. 

This lack of access to RT in LMICs was articulated in 2015 by the Lancet Commission on Radiation Therapy. Ideally, the RT service would be provided with linacs that offer state-of-the-art treatment that is safer than treatment with cobalt-60  with the added benefit that linacs have no radioactive sources avoiding  security risks. Currently, RT technology built for the developing world is of high cost to acquire and is complex to operate and service. 

Africa,   a continent with over 1.2 billion  inhabitants has  just over 400 linacs  and the population served by each linac is a critical factor in evaluating the RT services provided by countries. The IAEA recommendation is 1 unit for every 250,000 people and yet none of the 54 countries in Africa is even close to being able to satisfy this recommendation. Even Mauritius which has a ratio of 1 linac per 423,000 people fails to meet this recommendation. The lack of RT capacity is especially pronounced in the Sub-Saharan region where most of the 27 African countries that do not have linacs are located. 

In recognition of both the shortfall of RT services in LMICs and the poor performance in LMICs of linacs current designed for use in the developed world, Project STELLA   was initiated by ICEC in  collaboration  with CERN, STFC, UK universities, African partners. 

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