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iwCLL 2025 | The Max Foundation CLL program in Ethiopia: aiming to improve access to treatment
In this interview, Catherina Scheepers, from The Max Foundation, Gauteng, South Africa, comments on the challenges of facilitating access to treatment for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in low- to middle-income countries (LMICs). She highlights that the initial barrier to improving patient outcomes is a lack of access to treatment, which in turn hinders the development of diagnostics, physician training, and patient education, emphasizing that treatment is a catalyst for progress. The Max Foundation aims to accelerate access to treatment, for example, through its CLL program in Ethiopia. This interview took place at the biennial International Workshop on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (iwCLL) 2025 in Krakow, Poland.
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Transcript
So the Max Foundation is a global health organization and we work in low- to middle-income countries to facilitate access to treatment. We are on a mission to accelerate this access because as we know patients in these countries often don’t have access to the treatments they need and even where it’s available it’s not accessible.
So we started the CLL program two years ago through the help of BeOne that was so kind to give us an investment of treatment so that we could start building the health system in preparation for treating more CLL patients in Ethiopia...
So the Max Foundation is a global health organization and we work in low- to middle-income countries to facilitate access to treatment. We are on a mission to accelerate this access because as we know patients in these countries often don’t have access to the treatments they need and even where it’s available it’s not accessible.
So we started the CLL program two years ago through the help of BeOne that was so kind to give us an investment of treatment so that we could start building the health system in preparation for treating more CLL patients in Ethiopia. To date, we have close to 100 patients receiving treatment, and this would not have been possible today if it wasn’t for this investment.
There are so many barriers – we would need a whole day to talk about it – but the initial barrier that most patients face is lack of access to treatment. Without the treatment, there isn’t a need for an impetus to develop diagnostics, to train physicians, to actually educate patients about what is available. So what we often find, and that has really been proven through our model, is that treatment is the catalyst that comes into a country and then lets the rest of the pieces fall in place.
I think CLL, as we know, is really not just a centralized condition. It is really a global condition that affects so many patients out there. We’ve seen such great development in treatment, and there is so much out there and available, but we still need that innovation to come to these low- to middle-income countries. We are creating a gap in equity for patients where we see the treatment accelerate in some areas where the rest of us will have to catch up.
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