‘I saw an oncologist cry’: Tigray cancer patients sent home to die for lack of drugs

Doctors call for international help as Ethiopia civil war leaves terminally ill being treated with paracetamol in Mekelle hospital

Doctors caring for cancer patients at the main hospital in Tigray say they have only two chemotherapy drugs left in date and are treating terminally ill people with expired medication and paracetamol. Eighteen months of war have left the sickest in society suffering agonising deaths, they say.

For the first time in 11 months, doctors at the Ayder referral hospital in Mekelle took receipt of an oral chemotherapy drug earlier this month as part of an airlift by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Until then, they had had only one, Doxorubicin, still in date.