Most of what is written about cancer is addressed to the person who has been diagnosed. This page is for the people around them.
A great deal of what helps most needs no medical knowledge at all. Going to the appointment. Writing down what is said. Keeping the papers in one place. Asking the questions that are harder to ask about your own illness. This page sets out how each of those works.
Key facts
- Ethiopia reported oral morphine available in its public health sector in 2021 (opens in a new tab). Treatment for pain and other symptoms is a separate service from treatment aimed at the cancer. It is worth asking for by name.
- A folder kept by the family is often the fullest record, and the easiest one to bring to an appointment.
- Out-of-pocket payment was 46% of Ethiopian health expenditure in 2023 (WHO Global Health Observatory, indicator
GHED_OOPSCHE_SHA2011). Much of the cost of care is settled at the point of care, by the person receiving it. - Travel, nights away and days not worked are part of the cost of a treatment plan. They recur with every visit.
- What is established about reducing cancer risk in a family is set out on the reduce your risk pages.
Going to appointments
Almost nobody takes in everything they are told at an appointment of this kind. A second person with paper is the simplest correction available.
What is useful to write down is not only the plan but the words. The name of the cancer, the name of any stage given, the names and doses of medicines, the name of the doctor and the place. Asking what an unfamiliar word means before leaving the room is easier than finding out afterwards. It is a reasonable thing to ask.
If more than one relative is available, it helps to agree who goes to which appointment and who keeps the folder. One person holds the record. One person is the point of contact for the rest of the family. That saves a great deal of repeating.
Holding the record
Because files do not follow a patient between facilities, the folder a family keeps becomes the record. Test results, scan and pathology reports, appointment dates, medicine names and doses, and the names of the clinicians seen and where. Care may move between a health centre, a hospital and a specialist service. That folder is what makes the second visit start from where the first one finished.
Keep receipts in the same folder. They are the running total of what treatment has cost so far.
Asking about pain and symptom treatment
Treating pain and other symptoms is a separate matter from treating the cancer. It can run alongside treatment intended to cure. Ethiopia’s report to WHO for 2021 records oral morphine as available in the public health sector.
Pain relief is worth asking about by name rather than waiting for it to be raised. Ask which service provides it, where it is, and what is needed to be seen there. That may be a referral, a card, a payment, or a particular day. If pain is not controlled between appointments, ask for the name of the person to go back to.
Money, distance and time
Asking what a plan will cost in total, before it starts, is the only route to a figure you can plan around. It is easier for a family member to ask than for the person who has just been diagnosed. Travel and days away from work belong in that total, and they repeat with every visit. Practical and financial sets out the national financing figures and the cost questions worth putting to the facility.
Be careful with
Anyone selling a cure, whether a product, a treatment abroad, or a prayer for payment. Advice to delay medical treatment while something else is tried. Survival figures found online. They describe populations in other countries and other health systems, and say nothing about one person here.
Slowing a decision of that kind down, and putting the offer to the treating clinician first, costs nothing.
For the rest of the family
What is established for Ethiopia on reducing risk is set out on the reduce your risk pages. Those pages cover HPV vaccination at age 9, hepatitis B vaccination in infancy, tobacco, alcohol, weight and physical activity.
For women in the family, cervical screening is worth raising separately. Ethiopia’s programme is opportunistic. Screening is offered at a visit rather than by invitation at a set age. So the request usually has to come from her. Where to get screened sets out the questions that establish where screening is available.