Our Doctors - Dr Raul C Ribeiro, US
Dr Ribeiro is a founding Trustee of World Child Cancer. Dr. Ribeiro is amongst the most accomplished and respected paediatric oncologists in the world. His research has driven many advances in the treatment and cure of child cancers and he has a particular interest in those conditions that are prevalent in developing countries. His mission in life is to fight child cancer, giving more children across the world a better chance of survival.
Dr Ribeiro trained in medicine in Brazil at the University of Parana School of Medicine in Curitiba before specialising in paediatrics, haematology and oncology. He joined St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, internationally recognized for its pioneering work in finding cures and saving children with cancer, on a Postdoctoral Fellowship in 1984. Dr Ribeiro is the Director of the St Jude Leukaemia/Lyphoma Division of the Oncology Department as well as being the Director of the St Jude International Outreach Programme and a Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Tennessee.
St. Jude is based in Memphis in the US and its current survival rate for children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is 94%. St Jude transfers its expertise in curing children to resource poor countries through its International Outreach Programme in which twinning partnerships are developed with hospitals in resource poor countries to improve diagnosis and treatment of child cancers. The programme has been very successful in increasing survival rates and operates in over 15 countries including China, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Venezuela. For example, over a ten year period St Jude worked with Hospital Bloom in El Salvador and increased survival rates from virtually nil to over 50% and reduced abandonment of treatment from 60% to only 10%.
“About 50% of childhood cancers can be cured with relatively simple procedures that have been known to doctors for many decades. When this knowledge is transferred and utilised via twinning programmes, it makes a dramatic and sustainable difference.”
A notable success is the twinning partnership which Dr Ribeiro developed in Brazil at the Centro de Hematologia e Oncologia Pediatrica in Recife. The twinning partnership has created a new centre of excellence in Recife led by Dr Francisco Pedrosa. Over the last ten years survival rates have more than doubled to 60% and doctors and nurses now have the local expertise and skills to treat a wide range of child cancers. The success of the twinning partnership has meant that the Recife hospital is itself able to become a twinning partner for a World Child Cancer project in Mozambique at the Maputo General Hospital where Dr Pedrosa and his team will provide mentoring and training for medical staff. This is the first twinning partnership between two hospitals in the southern hemisphere and is a testament to Dr Ribeiro’s expertise in creating effective and workable partnerships between medical professionals.
Dr Ribeiro plays an important and active role in the development of World Child Cancer projects. His expertise in the delivery of cancer treatment in resource poor countries is crucial to the development of realistic and effective strategies for improving survival rates.
