Alum Introduces Radiotherapy Technology in Bolivia.
School of Public Health alum Rene Soria-Saucedo (SPH’14) goes to work every day with a goal to change the way people think about and engage with public health.
One and a half years ago, the health services researcher moved from Gainesville, Fla. to Bolivia to embark on a groundbreaking project that aims to increase and expand modern cancer therapy in the country’s public sector.
As a health specialist for the Bolivarian Agency for Nuclear Energy (ABEN), Soria-Saucedo has helped spearhead a $150 million initiative to provide radiotherapy cancer treatment in three health centers located in the cities of El Alto, La Paz, and Santa Cruz. Developed in coordination with Bolivia’s Ministry of Energy, and each center will house three PET imaging machines and six linear accelerators to detect and treat cancer for an estimated 4,000 patients who do not have access to these healthcare services. It will also provide more advanced chemotherapy treatment than what is currently available in the country.
Soria-Saucedo says current radiotherapy equipment in the country is outdated and uses the radioisotope cobalt-60, which can generate serious side effects on patients.
“This project will change the paradigm for cancer treatment in Bolivia, which is currently palliative care,” says Soria-Saucedo. “Without good technology, the diagnoses and treatments are expensive, poorly done, and a burden.”
The project will also fund medical training for oncologists to learn how to operate the new equipment.
“We have about 50 oncologists in the whole country, and most of them don’t have the training to use this technology to treat patients,” says Soria-Saucedo. “If a doctor receives a patient with a huge tumor, they work with surgeons, but not with imaginologists, and that’s a huge problem.”
The most prevalent types of cancer in Bolivia are cervical cancer and breast cancer in women, and prostate and gastric cancer in men. He says most Bolivian cancer patients don’t seek health services until they are in stage 3 or 4 of their diagnosis, mainly because of mistrust of the system, and because there are no real options to treat effectively early on.
Aside from medical treatment and training, the project will fuel other major investments in nuclear technology, including a nuclear reactor plant, a cyclotron that will produce radioactive compounds that allows the PET detection of tumors, and a new irradiation plant to irradiate food and allow the country to export fruits and vegetables.
Soria-Saucedo says the ABEN has contracted with an Argentinian company that handles the construction and development process, while the agency manages the administrative and operational aspects of the project, including equipment maintenance, drug purchasing, quality of care, patient satisfaction, and safety precautions around all of the new radiation equipment. The health centers are expected to open at separate times this summer.
Prior to relocating to Bolivia in 2018, Soria-Saucedo worked as a researcher and assistant professor of pharmaceutical outcomes and policy at the University of Florida’s College of Pharmacy. His work spans a variety of areas with research interests in pharmacology, rational use of medicine, data analysis, health outcomes, pharmacoeconomics, and pharmacoepidemiology.
Soria-Saucedo studied pharmacology at SPH, and completed the MPH program in 2014. He says the program instilled solid technical skills of data analysis and management, as well as using data to make value-based decisions in healthcare.
“The work at BU changed my life completely bc those are exactly the skills that I wanted to learn,” says Soria-Saucedo, who says Bolivia is in need of data analysis experts. “Being able to share these skills with doctors and then see how they implement it in their own projects is really