The Problem

The Crisis

A nine-year-old girl whose parents carried her for miles arrived at a rural clinic in Uganda, only to bleed to death from a sarcoma hemorrhage. After months of dismissing her pain, the osteosarcoma had advanced too far. The tumor had eaten through her femur, grown through a large artery, and spread throughout her body.

We learned this story from Dr. William Eward, an orthopedic oncologist at Duke University. "If only we had caught this earlier," he said, knowing that in his U.S. hospital, this child would likely have been diagnosed much earlier.

This happens thousands of times every year.

The Global Burden

In developing countries, 81% of osteosarcoma cases present as advanced or metastatic disease. Children wait an average of 4.5 months from first symptoms to diagnosis, by then, it's often too late for limb-saving treatment. Low-income countries have only 1 CT scanner per million people compared to 40 in high-income countries. Yet X-rays cost just $140 versus $2,048 for an MRI and are already accessible in rural clinics worldwide. The problem isn't the equipment. It's the lack of expertise to interpret what's already there.

The Diagnosis Problem

X-rays cost only $140 compared to $2,048 for MRI. X-ray machines exist even in rural clinics worldwide. The problem isn't the equipment, it's the lack of physicians with expertise to interpret them. Without trained specialists, radiographs showing bone cancer are misread as benign or simply noted as "abnormal" without appropriate urgency. Children wait months while tumors spread.

81%

Advanced Disease

4.5 MONTHS

Diagnostic Delay

1:40

Scanner Ratio

$140

X-Ray Cost