“Every cancer patient joined a queue and waited to be flown out. That is no longer the case.”

Cancer is one of the biggest public health challenges Cabo Verde faces. Over the past decade, working with Gulbenkian and a number of Portuguese hospitals, the country has trained far more health professionals, opened a new oncology centre on São Vicente and begun to build its own clinical research.

Far fewer patients now have to be flown to Portugal for treatment. With around 500 new cases a year, Cabo Verde is better equipped than ever to diagnose and treat cancer.

In this video, we meet some of the leading figures in Cabo Verdean oncology and hear what the work has achieved, in the clinic and in the laboratory.

One aim runs through every account: to catch cancer earlier and treat it closer to home—and, alongside that, to sustain the field in which Cabo Verde leads among Portuguese-speaking African countries, palliative care.

Cabo Verde’s Ministry of Health and Gulbenkian have worked together since 2016 to strengthen cancer diagnosis and treatment in the country, training health professionals and equipping the two central hospitals.