Cancer in Africa: The Silent Epidemic — Myths, Truths, and the Kenyan Case Study: How Food Systems, Chemicals, Corruption, and Complacency Fuel Africa’s Cancer Crisis

Description

Cancer is no longer a “Western disease.” Across Africa, its incidence is rising rapidly—yet the conversation remains fragmented, underfunded, and misunderstood. In Cancer in Africa: The Silent Epidemic, Dr. Levi Cheruo Cheptora delivers the continent’s most comprehensive and critical exploration of how historical legacies, toxic food systems, weak regulation, and political complacency have converged to create a preventable public health crisis.

Using Kenya as a case study, this textbook unpacks the deep-rooted social, environmental, and policy factors driving cancer’s spread—from pesticides and processed foods to industrial waste, imported carcinogens, and broken health governance. It exposes how corruption, regulatory capture, and Big Pharma’s profit motives undermine prevention, diagnosis, and treatment across the continent.

Blending public health, history, environmental science, and political economy, Dr. Cheptora challenges long-held myths about witchcraft, curses, and fate—reframing cancer as both a medical and systemic issue that demands collective accountability. Through rich case studies, field data, and African perspectives, the book highlights not only the problem but also the path forward: local innovation, policy reform, community education, and African-led research.

Written for students, practitioners, policymakers, and the general public, the book’s interdisciplinary structure makes it both an academic resource and a call to action. Each unit concludes with clear learning objectives, discussion prompts, and evidence-based strategies for reform.

Key Themes Include:

• The forgotten history of cancer in Africa before and after colonization
• Cultural myths and stigma shaping care-seeking behavior
• Food, chemical, and industrial systems fueling carcinogenic exposure
• Governance failures: KEBS, corruption, and regulatory neglect
• The political economy of healthcare and the global drug industry
• Emerging African innovations in oncology, AI, and biotechnology
• Strategies for cancer literacy, community advocacy, and policy reform

Grounded in African realities and voices, Cancer in Africa goes beyond statistics to humanize the crisis—revealing the lives behind the numbers and the structural forces that determine who survives. It is both a textbook and manifesto for a generation determined to demand cleaner environments, ethical leadership, and equitable access to care.

Whether you are a medical student, health professional, journalist, activist, or concerned citizen, this book will transform how you understand cancer—and what it will take to defeat it in Africa.