In Mali’s national language, cancer translates to curse. Fearful of a diagnosis, many women avoid hospitals and visit traditional healers instead.

There, they are given herbs and leaves, which they paste onto their bodies. Their cancerous lumps grow, spreading upwards, breaking the skin and forming open wounds. Rather than helping, the herbs complicate the sores, which become necrotic and dry.

“Cancer in Bambara means a really bad spell, it carries such a negative meaning,” Sophie Gossens, a Belgian nurse working for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Bamako, told the Telegraph.

“I saw a mother who had left an open breast cancer wound. She was still lactating, so milk was coming out of the wound.” 

Across Africa, cancer rates have more than doubled over the past 20 years. Breast and cervical cancer are most common, accounting for roughly 14 and 17 per cent of diagnoses, respectively.

But for women in Mali, a diagnosis is not just devastating for their health. “Women are abandoned by their husbands the moment they know they have cancer,” Ms Goossens said, adding that many are lambasted by their families and expelled from their communities.

She told the story of one patient, a 28-year-old mother of three called Dganaba, who was diagnosed with open wound breast cancer early in 2022.

“Her husband moved out and blocked the water and electricity supply to chase her away. She took her three children, the youngest is two, to live with her mother. It is shameful to be abandoned by your husband and return to the family home in Mali,” Ms Goossens said. 

“She started chemotherapy but was under a lot of stress. She passed away a few weeks ago.”

Only 13-16 per cent of women diagnosed with breast cancer in Mali survive five years – in high-income countries, that figure is 85 per cent. In the UK the rate currently stands at 89 per cent, increasing to 99 per cent if the cancer is diagnosed at Stage 1.

But for most in Mali cancer is diagnosed at a later stage, Ms Goossens said, reducing the chances that treatment will work.

‘The machine broke and they couldn’t find the pieces’

While hesitancy to seek medical treatment is widespread, those who do wish to visit a doctor have limited options. Screening is rare outside of the capital, Bamako, while the country has just one radiotherapy machine. 

In 2021, that machine broke – it was not fixed for nine months. 

“The recommendation is usually one radiotherapy machine for one million people – Mali has one for 20 million people,” Ms Goossens said. “In 2021, it was only functional for three months. The machine broke and they couldn’t find the pieces.”