Call for a Holistic Reset in Lung Cancer Care
2026-08-08
Lung cancer care in the Philippines, not new scanners or drugs, now stands as the real stress test of the health system. At the center of that argument is Dr. Mary Bussell, founder and chief executive officer of TriMarStrategies and lead author of the Lung Cancer Consensus Statement, who insists that oncology outcomes will depend less on isolated clinical wins and more on how institutions, ministries, and private actors decide to work together.
Her stance is blunt. Fragmented programs waste lives. She points to gaps in referral networks, erratic reimbursement, and uneven access to histopathology and molecular diagnostics, arguing that without strong institutions even the best tyrosine kinase inhibitors or immunotherapy regimens will reach patients late, if at all. For Bussell, the core intervention is governance: clear national guidelines, predictable procurement, and accountability mechanisms that bind hospitals, payors, and regulators into a single chain of responsibility.
The bolder claim is that collaboration, not charisma in any single clinic, will define survival curves. Bussell frames lung cancer as a shared burden that must pull in employers, insurers, civil society, and local governments, from screening campaigns to palliative care. Only when epidemiology data, financing rules, and clinical protocols move in step, she argues, will the country stop treating lung cancer as an isolated diagnosis and start treating it as a system failure that can, and should, be repaired.
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