By Ellesse Sorbonne, Contributing Editor

In September 2000, world leaders ratified the Millennium Development Goals, eight initiatives to relieve the world’s poorest by 2015. Goal Six is to eradicate major disease, which the agreement defines as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. The charter, however, makes no mention of the epidemic that claims more lives than all three of these communicable diseases combined—cancer.

According to a report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) in December, global cancer deaths were expected to reach seven million by the end of 2009. The study additionally found that cancer deaths are on average rising one percent annually and even more steeply in the developing world. Dr. Douglas Blayney, president-elect of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, has pronounced cancer, “one of the greatest untold health crises of the developing world.”

Leading health experts anticipate that if cancer growth continues, cancer will not only surpass heart disease as the leading cause of death by 2010, but also that annual cancer fatalities will mushroom to 17 million by 2030.

Chillingly, according to the WHO’s Goodwill Ambassador for Cancer Control, these figures are probably too low. In an interview with the Diplomatic Courier, Ambassador Nancy G. Brinker explained that cancer victims in the developing world are frequently never diagnosed. “There aren’t even working cancer registries in at least 20 low-resource countries,” she said. What’s more, when individuals do have access to testing centers, the entrenched cancer stigma often dissuades them from seeking diagnosis.

Ambassador Brinker is familiar with stigmas. Her sister Susan G. Komen died of breast cancer 30 years ago when the topic was taboo in the United States. “It wasn’t acceptable to talk about breast cancer in public. It wasn’t in newspapers. It wasn’t on TV. So how were you to know?” She promised her dying sister that she would dedicate her life to combating the shame of breast disease.

Over the following three decades, Brinker has not only broken through the silence surrounding breast cancer, she has championed efforts to find its cure, most notably through her Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure organization, which is now the world’s largest and most successful education and fundraising event for breast cancer. To date, almost every major advance in breast cancer research has been largely funded by this campaign.

Brinker’s tenacity and vision have secured her numerous honors, most notably the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, the nation’s highest civilian honor. She was U.S. Ambassador to Hungary from 2001 to 2003 and U.S. Chief of Protocol from 2007 to 2009.

But perhaps none of these positions compare to her recent assignment as the WHO’s Goodwill Ambassador for Cancer Control. In this first-ever office, Brinker has been charged with raising cancer awareness on a global scale, particularly in the developing world.

She is well on her way. Since her induction this spring, Brinker has traveled to Austria, Hungary, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and Switzerland; in each nation, she has pushed for frank and open engagement with the disease, improved cancer registries, and an audience with each head of state, which she views as key to affecting change on an international level.

Last fall in Vienna, she challenged the International Atomic Energy Commission to develop lower cost, lower-energy cancer screening tools for developing nations. More remarkably still, Brinker organized a Race for the Cure in Egypt, complete with government backing and Giza pyramids awash in pink light. Dr. Mohamed Shaalan, Chairman of the Breast Cancer Foundation of Egypt, proclaimed the event landmark: "Soon Egyptians will no longer refer to breast cancer as `the wicked disease.’ Now, the public is learning that breast cancer is a curable condition. This remarkable, intensive, passionate, unprecedented cooperation between nations is a message of unity, peace and hope."

Brinker is indeed a champion of hope. She insists, “About 40 percent of cancer deaths are preventable today if we just apply what we know.” She is also pushing for cancer to be added to the UN Millennium Goals. [DC]

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