Lucia Syokau Muli found out she had breast cancer at the age of 27. We met her in Makueni, south of Nairobi, to understand how she is dealing with her diagnosis and the challenges she faces accessing treatment.
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Céline joined swissinfo.ch in 2018 as video journalist for the 'Nouvo in English' project, just after graduating from the Academie du journalisme et des medias (AJM) at the University of Neuchâtel. Originally from Ticino, she's been filming, writing and interviewing people all over Switzerland since she got her first reporter badge at 11 during a school camp.
Jessica covers the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to big global companies and their impact in Switzerland and abroad. She’s always looking for a Swiss connection with her native San Francisco and will happily discuss why her hometown has produced some of the greatest innovations but can’t seem to solve its housing crisis.
Cost is one of Lucia’s biggest worries, she tells SWI when we meet outside the Empower cancer clinic at the county hospital. The biggest financial strain is the recurring cost of trastuzumab, which Swiss pharma firm Roche sells as Herceptin and is credited with dramatically improving survival rates.
Although it’s been around for more than two decades, it remains unaffordable for many people in Kenya, where some 45% of the population live below the World Bank’s poverty line of $2.15 a day. One of the recommended 18 cycles cost more than double Lucia’s monthly income.
She isn’t alone. The cost of treatment is one of the biggest challenges facing doctors who have to make difficult decisions of whether to prescribe a treatment that will save a patient’s life but plunge them into poverty.
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Paying to survive – the deadly toll of breast cancer in Kenya
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In Kenya, the high price of drugs like trastuzumab, which Roche sells as Herceptin, is one reason why breast cancer is still seen as a death sentence.
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