Africa: Abba Mallum - the Nigerian Oncologist Helping to Fight Cancer in KZN and Across Africa

Propelled by an early vision to help others, Dr Abba Mallum tells Spotlight about his roots in Borno State, about opportunities in Stellenbosch and Durban, and about his pioneering PhD in radiotherapy and oncology.

In Borno State, Nigeria, soon after graduating from medical school Dr Abba Mallum treated a young patient whose sad plight would shape his future. In Gamboru Ngala, on northeastern Nigeria's border with Cameroon near Lake Chad, Mallum paid the young woman's taxi fare to the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital - about 150 kilometres away - where she was to have a breast lump removed. But poverty interrupted her pathway to care.

Mallum recounts: "In Nigeria, the healthcare sector is out of pocket. Many people cannot afford it. So as a service to the community that produced me, I was seeing patients for free. A young lady in her twenties had a breast lump and I told her she needs to go to the tertiary centre to have it removed. She said they don't have transport money. I remember saying to her: 'I'm not giving you the money in hand.' Instead, I paid for the taxi and phoned a colleague and told him: 'There is this patient who is coming, please can you help them'."

Eight months later, Mallum, then appointed as a resident doctor at Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, saw the young woman again, but she was barely recognisable.

"The saddest part is... They were taking me around, introducing the patients," he recalls. "And then we passed a patient and they told me, this is a lady with breast cancer. She was saying to me: 'Doctor, I know you'. So when we finished the rounds, I went back to her saying where do you know me from? She said: 'You saw me in the village. You said if I don't remove this thing it could kill me.' I said to her but you were supposed to be in the car. I paid for the car, what happened? She said: 'After you left, my mum asked me is it painful? I told her it wasn't painful. We had not cooked for more than three days and I have siblings. So immediately my mum told the taxi guy to keep 5 or 10 percent but to give back the rest of the money. We went shopping and then we had dinner. And now. This thing is killing me'."

Tragically, her health had deteriorated beyond cure. Mallum recalls: "It was already foul-smelling because when cancer breaks through the skin, bacterial infection often follows. It stuck in my mind."

The incident kept him up into the early morning hours. Somewhere past midnight, he says it became the pivot that steered his career toward oncology. "My best critical time of thinking is anything after midnight, say 2-3