Beyond “Late Presentation”: Explaining Delayed Cancer Diagnosis in East Africa
摘要
This chapter considers the health system “maze” from the perspective of health professionals aiming to create smoother managed pathways to and through cancer care. The authors argue that the wider cancer literature’s concept of “late presentation” can be misleading in directing too much attention to patients’ delays before presenting symptoms, while by contrast, most diagnostic delays faced by our interviewees occurred after their first arrival at a facility. The chapter identifies key bottlenecks faced by patients before diagnosis; assesses the scope for feasible improvements in the speed of diagnosis—central to survival chances—and identifies points of leverage for feasible improvement.