Former University of Buea student, now Professor at Harvard, Dr Wilfred Ngwa selected amongst the finalist of the prestigious BWH Bright Future’s prize’. The Winner will be decided by worldwide public vote. Please vote for his project “Tiny Drones to Target Cancer” and spread the word for others to vote here: www. brightfuturesprize.org
“Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide. The World Health Organization reports over 14 million new cases of cancer a year, with over 8.2 million deaths. Most of Africa’s over 2000 languages still have no word for cancer. This problem is further exacerbated by strong social stigma associated with the disease, as people do not want to talk about it. The stigma means that patients only present late with the disease, when it is too late to cure them given limited or no healthcare infrastructure for this in Africa; the ensuing deaths then further reinforce the stigma that cancer is essentially tantamount to death. Cancer is basically like a rogue cell that just keeps dividing uncontrollably. It invades our body’s healthy tissue to steal our health, kill and destroy. I am excited that God is helping me develop this new technology with one of the greatest potential to destroy the cancer first, with minimal collateral damage to the patient. Unlike with chemotherapy which makes patients lose their hair etc, the new technology is designed to basically train your immune system (white blood cells) to recognize cancer and destroy it as God designed our bodies to do in the first place. It will not only improve the survival and quality of life of cancer patients, but it will do it so effectively that it prevents cancer recurrence, one of the greatest fear of cancer patients”.