Consultant - Childhood Cancer, WPRO

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Purpose of the Consultancy

The Noncommunicable Disease (NCD) unit supports action across government and society in managing noncommunicable diseases – cardiovascular disease, diabetes, sensory health and cancer. This short term international professional consultancy is to support the implementation of the Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer and the Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines in the Western Pacific Region, to ensure that the objectives, activities, and deliverables are successfully achieved.

Background

Childhood cancer is an increasingly recognized public health concern in the Western Pacific Region (WPR), which includes countries with wide variation in health system capacity and cancer outcomes. While childhood cancers are largely curable, survival rates in many low‑ and middle‑income countries and Pacific Island settings in the Region remain substantially lower than in high‑income countries, largely due to late diagnosis, treatment abandonment, limited specialized services, and gaps in access to essential medicines and diagnostics. In line with global patterns, children in resource‑constrained settings in the WPR experience a disproportionately high burden of preventable mortality, compounded by weak cancer surveillance systems and limited coverage of population‑based cancer registries, which hinders accurate planning and monitoring of childhood cancer control efforts.

To address these inequities, the World Health Organization launched the Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer (GICC) in 2018, with the goal of achieving at least 60% survival for children with cancer globally by 2030 through the CureAll framework, which focuses on early diagnosis, standardized treatment, health system strengthening, and financial protection for families. Complementing this ef