First ladies, St. Jude and the WHO just formed a network so children with cancer get treated wherever they live

A child's chance of surviving cancer still depends far too much on their postcode. In Samarkand this week, an international network was launched to close that gap — bringing together first ladies and spouses of heads of state to champion children's access to diagnosis and treatment. The announcement came from Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which works worldwide to raise childhood cancer survival, during the second International Congress on Pediatric Oncology, held alongside the World Summit on Children's Well-Being with partners including UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank. Uzbekistan's First Lady Ziroat Mirziyoyeva will chair the network for its first two years. Uzbekistan already knows the model works: in February 2025 it and Mongolia became the first countries to receive essential childhood cancer medicines, free of charge and quality-assured, through a WHO–St. Jude programme.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: institutional program