When Yoav Horn, MD, began treating cancer patients in the Palestinian West Bank in 1978, the region faced a severe shortage of oncologists and people suffering from cancer too often remained undiagnosed until the disease had become untreatable.
Over the next twenty years, the West Bank Cancer Program founded by Horn changed the situation by helping to set-up two cancer clinics in the West Bank and training numerous Palestinian physicians in oncology. Last week, the World Health Organization awarded Horn, a UC San Francisco adjunct professor of laboratory medicine, the Sasakawa Health Prize in Geneva, Switzerland, for his dedicated work.
The award recognizes Horn's success in bringing oncology services to a population with a critical need and his persistence in maintaining and expanding the program in spite of the almost constant violence and political instability.
"The program was a very positive influence during otherwise difficult times. I think it helped (Israeli-Palestinian) relations," said Calvin Zippin, Sc.D., a UCSF professor emeritus in epidemiology and biostatistics.
One of the program's major goals was to teach people about the need for early treatment of cancer. The education effort, and the establishment of cancer treatment centers nearby, appeared to pay off. The program's patient database showed that as years passed, patients were more likely to be treated earlier in the disease progression.
Under Horn's direction, the program established two oncology treatment centers in the West Bank -- the first in a hospital in the Bethlehem area, and the second at a hospital in the northern city of Nablus. The program also worked to develop standardized treatment methods, acquire chemotherapy drugs, and train Palestinian Arab physicians in oncology.
Horn also worked to establish a computerized cancer patient registry for the West Bank, so that disease patterns in that population could be compared to those of Arabs who lived in Israel east of the Jordan River, and to other populations such as Jewish Israelis. The database tallied more than 7,000 patient records by 1995, when the program's facilities were turned over to the Palestinian Authority government, as part of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank.
The data from the registry revealed trends among Palestinian cancer patients, said Zippin, who worked with Horn to analyze the data. "Arabs in the West Bank tended to have a higher risk of cancers of the head and neck region, as well as higher rates of lung cancer, compared to Israelis," he said. The higher lung cancer rate, he said, is almost certainly due to cigarette smoking among the population, and suggests that educational programs to reduce smoking could save lives.
Zippin also recalled that many of Horn's patients expressed gratitude for his hard work on the program. "They really regarded him as a hero for this humanitarian work," he said.
Horn is chairman of the department of oncology at Assaf Harrofeh Medical Center, which is affiliated with the Sackler School of Medicine in Tel Aviv. He was an assistant research physician in UCSF's Cancer Research Institute from 1970-71, and since 1981 has held a professorial title in the department of laboratory medicine. Horn is the author of more than 75 publications in clinical oncology and maintains an active cancer research program in Israel.