Dr Paul Ndom

Dr Ndom is a lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (FMSB) and is Head of the Medical Oncology Service of Yaounde General Hospital. He is the Director of INCTR in Cameroon (www.inctr.org) and Permanent Secretary of the EURO-AFRICAN Congress of Oncology. He is also the assistant Permanent Secretary of the National Cancer Control Committee in Cameroon and the founding President of a Non-governmental Organisation called Chemotherapy Solidarity (SOCHIMIO) (www.Sochimio.org).

Professor Serigne Magueye Gueye

Serigne Gueye is a Professor of Urology at the University of Cheikh Anta Diop and Head of Urology at the Hopital General de Grand Yoff, in Dakar, Senegal.

Professor Gueye has received a number of honours, awards and fellowships. Among the medals received are:

• United Nations' Medal for Peace in Rwanda
• Ordre National du Mérite" of France
• "Croix de la valeur militaire avec étoile de Bronze", of France
• "Chevalier del ordre National du Lion du Senegal", Senegal
• "Ordre National du Tchad", Chad Republic
• "Officier del ordre National du Lion du Senegal", Senegal

Professor Gueye has published in numerous scientific journals and is an active member of several committees in his field of urology.

Doctor Rose Anorlu

Dr Rose Ihuoma Anorlu received her MBChB degree from the University of Ghana Medical School. She is a Fellow of the Nigeria Postgraduate Medical College, West African College of Surgeons, and a Member of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of London.

She holds an MPH degree from the University of Lagos. She was at one time an Honorary Research Fellow in the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department of the University of Birmingham, UK. She had part of her specialist training at the Birmingham Maternity Hospital/Birmingham Hospital for Women.

She is currently a Senior Lecturer/Consultant Gynaecologist in the Oncology and Pathological Studies of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the University of Lagos and the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. Her work includes clinical service, teaching and training and research.

Her main interest is in HPV/HIV related female genital cancers. She is involved in a community based cervical cancer screening programme, in the suburb of Lagos, sponsored by the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women’s Health of the University College Hospital, London.

She is a board member of the Faculty of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the Nigeria Postgraduate Medical College.

Professor Jean-Marie Kabongo Mpolesha

Professor Jean-Marie Kabongo Mpolesha was born in Mikalayi, Democratic Republic of Congo. He received his MD Diploma from the University of Zaire in 1976, Diploma in Pathology from the University of Kinshasha in 1994 and a PhD also from the University of Kinshasa in 2003.

He has published many articles in peer-reviewed journals and is a member of the Académie Internationale de Pathologie (AIP), Division Française et Division d'Afrique Francophone (DAF); Association Panafricaine des Pathologistes and the Association des Professeurs de l'Université de Kinshasa APUKIN).

Dr Mike Chirenje

Mike Chirenje, MD FRCOG, is a Gynaecological Oncologist/Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Zimbabwe, College of Health Science, Harare, Zimbabwe. His research interests are in evaluation of cervical cancer screening methods in low resource settings and randomized clinical trials for HIV prevention in women through evaluation of microbicides and oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (Pr-EP) of anti-retro viral drugs.

Professor Ahmed Elzawawy

Ahmed Elzawawy is an Egyptian clinical Oncologist (Radiation and Medical Oncologist ). He graduated from Alexandria University in Egypt and then from the University of Paris Sud, France. He is a Professor and Head of Oncology and Nuclear Medicine at the Suez Canal University in Egypt. He is currently President of ICEDOC & ICEDOC's Experts in Cancer Without Borders ,USA ( ICEDOC is The International Campaign for Establishment and Development of Oncology Centres, a non-profit organization incorporated in USA, www.icedoc.org ), Vice President of AORTIC for North Africa and a member of the advisory board of INCTR (Belgium).

Dr Anne Merriman

Dr Anne Merriman was born in Liverpool in 1935, Anne has spent 26 years in Africa and 7 years in SE Asia and only 8 years working in the UK.

After graduating at UCD, Ireland in 1963, she went to Nigeria as a Medical Missionary of Mary in 1964 and was there over a period of 10 years. During this time she was hands on in surgery, obstetrics, paediatrics and medicine.

After returning to the UK , she specialised in Geriatric Medicine and was a consultant from 1974 to 1981. She introduced palliative care into Singapore in 1984, when she undertook initial research into the needs of those dying from cancer, while Senior Teaching Fellow in the Department of Social and Preventative Medicine (now COFM) in National University of Singapore. This was followed up by meeting the needs with a volunteer group of doctors and nurses, who visited patients in their own home and introduced palliative care, using the analgesic ladder, to Singapore from 1985. Today this service is one of the best in SE Asia.

In 1990 she was invited to be the first Medical Director of Nairobi Hospice which opened in January 1990. After a publication in the journal CONTACT, published at the invitation of Dame Cicely Saunders, the editor, she received many letters from different African countries, asking her to assist their own people as the team were assisting in Nairobi . The inspiration to start a “model” affordable service for Africa started there.

In 1993, the “model” became a reality as Hospice Africa Uganda was commenced. This is now a success story in Uganda and a model for Africa and even the world as they are the first country to allow specially trained Nurses to prescribe oral morphine, as recommended in 1996 by WHO for countries where there are insufficient prescribers (doctors only) to bring pain control to those suffering severe pain from cancer or HIV/AIDS.

Anne is also a founder member of the Palliative Care Association of Uganda (1999) and the founding Vice-President. She is also a founder member of the African Palliative care Association and Vice Chair of the Board. She is a Board member of Hospice Africa UK and Hospice Africa Uganda. She is a Board Member of the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC) since 2006.

Anne has published more than 90 articles, 5 books and is editor and a peer reviewer for several journals. She is presently sought as a speaker for several international conferences per year and still is involved with bringing affordable and culturally appropriate palliative care to other African countries.

Doctor Carrie Hunter

Carrie P. Hunter is President and CEO of Oncology Consulting International, a cancer care management, research, education, and training consultancy company. She promotes collaborations and partnerships in cancer care, prevention and treatment research that lead to a better understanding of factors that impact cancer outcomes. She facilitates education and training initiatives for capacity building of the cancer health care workforces in developing countries. Public health solutions to cancer health disparity and policy issues that affect underserved populations in developed and developing countries are encouraged.

Dr. Hunter is a graduate of the New York University School of Medicine, with hematology and medical oncology training from the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA. She is the Vice President for the North America region (2007-2009) of the African Organization for Research and Training in Cancer, Inc. (AORTIC) and is a member of the AORTIC Executive Committee and Council.

She served as chairperson of the AORTIC Scientific Program Committee for the 2003 Accra, Ghana Conference on Cancer in Africa and facilitated the successful re-establishment of the AORTIC organization in Africa. She is on the Board of Directors of the African Cancer Center, Inc. – a new center which is planned for development in Lagos, Nigeria.

Dr. Hunter is a member of the 2007 Avon Foundation Scientific Advisory Board; and she is on the Board of Governors of the New York University School of Medicine Alumni Association. Dr. Hunter has served as a program director for the Community Clinical Oncology Program at the National Cancer Institute and as a program director and project officer for the National Institutes of Health Women’s Health Initiative, Bethesda, MD, USA.

She is co-editor of a book on Cancer in the Elderly published in 2000 by Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York, and a second book on Treatment and Management of Cancer in the Elderly published in 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, New York.

Petra Fordelmann

Petra Fordelmann has 17 years of Cancer Nursing and Palliative care experience, ranging from home based care nursing to managing a cancer care hospital. The focus of the cancer care is on Radiotherapy, specifically Neutron and Proton Therapy. She is also the President of the National Oncology nursing society of South Africa for the last 5 years and a board member of the International Society for Nurses in Cancer Care, representing Africa and the Middle East.

Furthermore Petra lectures for the B Tech Oncology Nursing course at the Cape Technikon and in the process of designing a distant learning course in Cancer Nursing. Current Occupation: Nursing service Manager of Faure Hospital, a division of iThemba LABS in Cape Town.

Dr James Holland

Dr. James F. Holland met with Dr. Victor Anomah Ngu, an old friend, then Dean of the Ibadan School of Medicine,  Dr. Christopher Williams, Oncologist at Ibadan, a former student of Dr. Holland"s, and the late Dr. Tori Solanke, Professor of Surgery at Ibadan at the International Cancer Congress in Seattle in 1984. Out of a pleasant reunion sprang the idea for AORTIC.

Chris Williams traveled extensively in Africa to recruit physicians interested in cancer. The first meeting in Lome, Togo, was a great success. Dr. Jan Stjernsward, Chief of the WHO Cancer Program attended and WHO helped with expenses. The remainder of the history of AORTIC is told elsewhere, but the effort to help African cancer patients and doctors gain access to the world's resources, intellectual and material, has been a driving force from the start.

Dr. Holland attended Princeton University and Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. He worked at the National Cancer Institute and at Roswell Park Cancer Institute before joining the faculty of Mount Sinai School of Medicine as Director of the Cancer Center in 1973, where he still works.

He was a founder and Chairman of the Cancer and Leukemia Group B, and has been elected to the Presidency of the American Association for Cancer Research and of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The text Holland -Frei Cancer Medicine is in its 6th Edition.

Dr. James Holland is married to Dr. Jimmie Holland. They have six children and six grandchildren.

Dr Christopher Williams

Christopher Williams, MD, FRCPC, FWACP, DABIM, is a dual citizen of Nigeria and Canada and had his basic medical education at the University of Munich, Germany. He obtained his postgraduate medical training at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada where he trained in Internal Medicine, followed by training in Clinical Haematology at the McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and in Medical Oncology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, NY, USA. He then returned to Nigeria to work at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria and was on the faculty of the College of Medicine of the University of Ibadan from 1978 to 1986. During this period, he served the institution as the Foundation Subdean of the Faculty of Basic Science and Pharmacy. It was during this period that he teamed up with two senior African colleagues, Dr. Victor Ngu of the Cameroon, and Dr. Toriola Solanke of Nigeria, and his American mentor, James F. Holland, to found the African Organisation for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC), serving the organization as its Founding Secretary-General. In 2000 he was involved in the process of reactivating the then moribund AORTIC, thereby helping to create AORTIC International, which has recently succeeded in reactivating the Africa-based organization.

Dr. Williams, who has practiced medicine in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, has published about 100 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, abstracts in international conference proceedings and chapters in books. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the book “Breast Cancer in Women of African Descent”, which is about to be published by Spinger. He is a pioneer researcher in clinical retrovirology in Africa and was the first biomedical researcher to alert Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, to the earliest epidemiological data of HIV/AIDS. His work in Nigeria also encompasses the earliest attempt to establish Medical Oncology as a discipline in a major Sub-Saharan Hospital.

Professor Sulma I. Mohammed

Sulma Mohammed; DVM, MS, PhD. Dr. Mohammed earned her MS and PhD degrees from Cornell and Purdue University, USA, respectively. She is a dual citizen of Sudan and United States of America. Dr. Mohammed is Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology, Director of Purdue University Cancer Center Drug Discovery Shared Resource, and Adjunct Professor of Medical Microbiology at Indiana University School of Medicine. Dr. Mohammed was a Walther Cancer Institute fellow and American association for Cancer Research-Cancer Research Foundation of America- Prevention Research Fellow.

Dr. Mohammed has a well funded laboratory (1 million US Dollars) to conduct studies on breast and bladder cancer. One of her research projects focuses on identification of models to study ER-negative breast cancer development and progression in women, especially African-American and African women (the majority of African and African-American women develop ER-negative tumors at a young age). Up to now, no specific treatment regime is found to treat ER-negative tumors as their counterpart ER-positive tumors.

In addition, Dr. Mohammed is working to identify biomarkers for early detection of breast cancer metastasis using proteomic-based approaches. Lately, she developed an interest in cervical cancer in collaboration with oncologists from Nigeria and Emory University, US. Dr. Mohammed has received a number of awards, including African American Institute award, African women leaders in science award, and many American Association for Cancer Research travel awards. She has published her research findings in reputable journals that include Cancer Research and Molecular Cancer Therapeutic journals. She is a member of the editorial board of the Cancer Chemoprevention journal.

Professor Olufunmilayo Olopade

Dr. Olufunmilayo Falusi Olopade graduated with distinction from the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1980. She subsequently did her house job at the University College Hospital Ibadan after which she proceeded to the Nigerian Navy Hospital, Lagos for her National Youth Service Corps. She left for the United States of American soon thereafter and studied Internal Medicine at the famous Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois where she was named Chief Resident in 1986. Upon completion of her Hematology/Oncology Fellowship training at the University of Chicago, she was appointed to the faculty in 1991 in recognition of her brilliance and talent. In 1992, she was appointed the Director of the Cancer Risk Clinic, and in 1998, she was appointed Director of the Fellowship Program in the Section of Hematology/Oncology of the same institution. Dr Olopade is now the Director of the Center for Clinical Cancer Genetics in the Department of Medicine and holds many other faculty, hospital, and administrative posts.

Dr Olopade received the "Phenomenal Woman Award" in recognition of her work within the African American community. She received the Heroes in Health care award from the Access Community Network in 2005. Also, as recently as September 2005, Dr Olopade was awarded the prestigious McArthur Fellows program.

Professor Charles Gombe-Mbalawa

Charles Gombe-Mbalawa became a Professor of Oncology in 1992 and is Head of Department of the Medical Oncology at the University Teaching Hospital in Brazzaville. He is also the editor of the "Carcinologie Pratique en Afrique" medical journal.

Barrie Adedeji

Barrie Adedeji is a Certified Public Accountant in private practice and Financial Controller/Treasurer of AORTIC in New York. She is also Executive Director of ENHICA International, Inc. and has developed and organized workshops and seminars that address health and environmental issues in Africa and the Caribbean. She was a member of the steering committee that organized the AORTIC conference in Accra, Ghana in 2003, and is a member of the fund raising committee for AORTIC in the United States. Barrie sits on the board of several health-related institutions and acts as mentor/advisor to professional women's groups in the international community. She has also served on the Budget and Finance Committee of New York's Riverside Church.

Ms. Adedeji attended New York University and completed her graduate work in Intercultural Service, Leadership and Management with concentrations in Sustainable Development and Conflict Transformation at The School for International Training in Vermont.