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Last week, Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto received an anonymous donation of $100M as part of a $2.5B campaign for cancer care. It’s incredible generosity, and PMH does wonderful, lifesaving work.

At the same time, there’s a global context: that single $100M gift is more than what many low-income countries spent on health from their own budgets in all of 2023. Source: data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH...

That’s domestic government spending only. In other words, what each country funds from its own resources— not counting foreign aid— for a full year. On EVERYTHING related to health.

In many countries, even basic cancer care remains out of reach. For them, the systems to deliver this type of care don’t yet exist.

So many of the challenges the world faces are rooted in inequality: of resources, income, and access to health care. The ambition we have for cancer care in wealthy countries should be the ambition we have for patients everywhere.