From Gatwick to Kampala: Radiotherapy and the Power of Collaboration: a blog by Radiotherapy UK Ambassador Jo McNamara.
With the support of the Emirates Foundation and Climbers Against Cancer, head and neck oncologist Katie Wakeham led a team of radiotherapy professionals, Jo McNamara, Claire Hardiman, Naman Julka-Anderson, Jack Doraiswamy and Toni Hewines, to the Uganda Cancer institute (UCI) to help educate, train and support the clinical staff. Dr Katie Wakeham has been collaborating with the team for many years and the UCI has already benefitted from her dedicated support and training.
It’s not every day that six UK-based radiotherapy professionals pack their bags at Gatwick and fly across continents to collaborate with colleagues in Uganda, but thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Emirates Foundation and Climbers Against Cancer, that’s exactly what we did. Our destination? The Uganda Cancer Institute (UCI) in Kampala, where we spent an unforgettable, humbling, and deeply impactful week working alongside local oncologists, radiation therapists, dosimetrists, physicists and nurses.
We arrived in Kampala full of anticipation, ready to listen, learn, and share. Our main mission? To work collaboratively with the radiotherapy team to explore how we could improve the accuracy, efficiency, and patient experience in radiation treatments. What we experienced on the ground left an indelible impression on us all.
Tireless work to deliver radiotherapy
From day one, we were welcomed with warmth, openness, and an eagerness to connect. We spent our days working through the radiotherapy pathway from CT simulation, to treatment planning, and finally to delivery.
We quickly realised that while the expertise and dedication of the UCI staff was phenomenal, the service is under-resourced and the entire radiotherapy workforce is incredibly limited in number; and yet they work tirelessly under pressure to care for patients, many of whom arrive with late-stage disease.
Our aim wasn’t to impose, but to co-create realistic, sustainable improvements. We identified several areas where targeted training and education could significantly enhance radiotherapy techniques. But we also recognised that change can’t happen overnight, especially in a system already stretched so thin.
What’s needed is continued, long-term support, not just financially, but in terms of mentorship, audit, evaluation, and shared learning. One-time visits can spark ideas, but sustained collaboration is what turns them into action. This is what we have been inspired to do after our first visit.
Emotional moments with young patients
One of the most emotional parts of our trip was treating a large number of paediatric patients, we identified some immediate improvements that could make a big difference: child-friendly waiting areas, distraction therapies, and better immobilisation techniques to ensure safer, more accurate treatment delivery.
We didn’t just talk; we listened and recorded. Over the course of our visit, we created four Rad Chat episodes with UCI radiation therapists, shining a light on their incredible work, the challenges they face, and their personal stories of motivation and growth in a demanding environment.
Rad Chat | Rad Chat in Uganda #2: Ben Ssemata – “why I became a radiation therapist in Uganda”
Pride in sharing skills
One of our proudest moments was delivering a lecture on accuracy, precision, and reproducibility in radiotherapy. It might sound dry to outsiders, but these concepts can literally mean the difference between missing a tumour or damaging healthy tissue. We highlighted practical ways to improve setup accuracy and reduce the treatment of surrounding healthy organs, something that’s critically important in resource constrained settings.
What hit us hardest? The stark contrast to the UK. Patients lying on the floor waiting for treatment, families scraping together money for their treatment often decimating their entire family financially, the high number of patients with advanced disease. It was sobering. It was confronting. But it also lit a fire in us to do more, to connect more, to advocate more, and to never take our own healthcare systems for granted.
Thank you to Dr Katie Wakeham and the amazing team at UCI that made this trip possible. We are excited to continue to work with the team at UCI.
Written by Jo McNamara, Radiotherapy UK Ambassador, therapeutic radiographer and senior lecturer in radiotherapy and oncology.
About Uganda Cancer Institute
The Uganda Cancer Institute (UCI) is the only radiotherapy cancer centre in Uganda for a population of about 45 million people. The UCI has a vision to build a sustainable high quality radiotherapy service and has a relatively young team of highly committed staff. The Ugandan government has made a significant investment in radiotherapy services over the past years. The Radiotherapy Unit has 3 external beam radiotherapy machines, a CT scanner and a simulator. The Ugandan government plan to build four regional radiotherapy centre to improve access for the population.
