Marrakech Film Festival bestows Palestinian film 'Happy Holidays' with top awardThe idea for Egypt’s Chefaa pharmacy delivery app came from a very personal dilemma. When Doaa Aref was diagnosed with cancer in 2016 and needed surgery then ongoing treatment, she had to isolate herself after undergoing radioiodine therapy. Cut off from the outside world, she found she could order everything she needed online, with one crucial exception – she could not get the medicine she needed. “She called me to say she can literally order anything she needs online, except for the medication she was going to need for the rest of her life after the surgery,” recalls her friend and co-founder of the app, Dr Rasha Rady. Dr Rady told her she was not alone. “All my chronic patients were facing that,” she said. Egypt’s old-fashioned and fractured pharmacy network meant the market was not digitised. Inventory lists were not shared and were sometimes still kept on paper. It was difficult to tell what each pharmacy had on its shelves without popping in, so looking for a particular medicine might mean going door-to-door. The problem was the seed of an idea and seven years later, the pair’s app matches more than 2.1m active users with pharmacies that will send them the right medicine. They have raised $8.6m in funding and have also set up in Saudi Arabia. Dr Rady said: “Having a big gap can be seen as a challenge, or can be seen as an opportunity. We saw this as an opportunity. We have a huge gap in Africa and Egypt, when it comes to the data infrastructure. In the past five years, everything was paper and pen, it was not even digital.” Chefaa’s success is not isolated, say market analysts. While Africa may not share Silicon Valley’s reputation for start-ups, many countries do have a small, but driven set of digital entrepreneurs and innovators . , says Remi Adeseun, of Salient Advisory, a boutique consultancy firm looking at health tech in Africa that has identified 24 leading start-ups. Africa’s health systems have huge gaps and great shortages of funding, but new technology can open new ways to fill the holes, says Mr Adeseun, global director. He says: “Technology is very useful for bridging these kinds of gaps in that it can take one to many, where bricks and mortar are restricted to one to one.” “This is one of the advantages: the huge opportunity that exists in terms of unmet needs and the fact that there’s a crop of innovators who are socially driven but also see economic opportunity to solve these problems.” A sharp rise in the availability of internet and cheap Asian smartphones has also given a new mass-market platform. The World Bank estimates more than 160 million Africans gained broadband internet access between 2019 and 2022. The number of internet users in Sub-Saharan Africa more than doubled from 2016 to 2021. Between 2014 and 2021, nearly 200m started making or receiving digital payments. In Nigeria, in 2016, around a quarter of people were using the internet. By 2021, that was nearly a third. In Kenya it was nearly two-fifths and in Egypt nearly three-quarters. Then, just like in Europe and the US, the arrival of Covid-19 acted as another catalyst. Stuck at home, conservative consumers and businesses overnight had to overcome their suspicion of online commerce. Oghentega Iortim came up with the idea for his own health start-up in Nigeria, while running a horticulture venture. He said: “We quickly found that we were unable to sell fast enough before the plants died, as we were unable to store them in a controlled environment. Worse still, we were unable to find any storage facilities which would be able to meet our needs.” He and colleagues started looking at ways to monitor storage conditions, like the temperature they needed. He said: “This transformed into the idea of building something with this solution – and that it wouldn’t just be applicable in the agricultural sector.” The resulting start-up, Figorr, provides internet-linked sensors that monitor the temperature, humidity and location of delicate shipments of drugs, vaccines or equipment. Clients can track the conditions of their delicate consignments to stop losses as they move along supply chains. He said: “The problem I am trying to address is basically the problem of losses. When you look at Africa today, one of the things you hear over and over again is how many vaccines do not reach kids across the continent because of the lack of infrastructure, or the failure of infrastructure. “Say I am transporting vaccines that need to be stored at 2C to 8C and something has happened and temperatures are going way below or way above, we prompt users to take action to prevent losses from happening.” The business has been embraced by insurers, who are now prepared to underwrite shipments they previously thought were too risky to touch. Covid-19 was a boost for Figorr, after the fledgling company was brought in by the Nigerian government to try to stop losses in vaccines. Figorr has raised $1.5m of funding in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa. “I wouldn’t say we’re well established, but we’re getting there,” he says. Many African countries have a pool of young, cheap, tech savvy developers who can in the early days. Early funding often comes from friends, family and local investors. But at a certain stage, when serious money is needed, African start-ups are still likely to need to find venture capital from America or Europe. Mr Adeseun said: “Venture capital is the lifeblood of scale. To a point, venture capital is not a charity, they are looking to make multiple returns on their investment. It is therefore very encouraging to see that of these leading innovators that we identified, almost half of them are funded from local investors.” Overall, Mr Adeseun says it is an exciting time to be in the market. He said: “Exciting as the times are, there are clear barriers. One of those barriers is capital, access to working, patient capital. The key thing is that until the access becomes more routine and mainstream, it’s going to be a challenge.”Marrakech Film Festival Bestows Palestinian Film 'Happy Holidays' With Top Awardtop646 bet.com 。

“My twin sister Nicola got sick when she was 24 years old. It was determined that she had stomach cancer and passed away two months to the day she was diagnosed.” Natasha Benn lost her sister to a rare and aggressive form of stomach cancer in 1993. Before Nicola, her mother had passed away from the same cancer when Benn was two. So did her grandmother, aunt, and great-grandfather. “My dad always thought it might be some kind of hereditary component to the type of cancer that my mom had, but it was never confirmed at the time,” Benn said. Shortly after Nicola's death, a gastroenterologist strongly suggested that Benn undergo surgery to remove her stomach, given the close genetic link between the twins. Nine months later, the young woman decided to go forward with full gastrostomy, unbeknownst to her if she was carrying the same ailment. Grieving the loss of her sister and uncertain if she had made the right decision, Benn received news six years later confirming her choice had been the correct one. After performing a biopsy on the young woman’s stomach, pathologists discovered traces of cancer in the organ’s lining - something that could not have been detected even with an endoscopy. Little did they know, the Benns, along with another family from Detroit, were part of a groundbreaking discovery that transformed the lives of countless families. For the first time in history, researchers identified a genetic mutation in Natasha’s stomach which they named CDH1. This mutation was found to carry an 83 per cent risk of developing stomach cancer and 60 per cent likelihood of lobular breast cancer. Thanks to the technological advances and research, organizations like BC Cancer can find this mutation through risk-free, non-evasive, and efficient ways. A simple sample of saliva, or blood, can be all that’s needed to determine if one carries the rogue gene. “Genetic testing can be helpful in clarifying whether or not you have an increased risk [of cancer] and then determining what's available in terms of screening and prevention for those specific types of cancer,” said Jennifer Nuk, leader in genetic counsellor for the BC Cancer Hereditary Cancer Program. For decades, identifying hereditary cancer solely relied on analyzing one’s family history, without having certainty if members were carriers of the ailment, explained Nuk. In the early days of genetic testing, means were limited, costly, and slow. Today, however, researchers can examine more genes than ever before with greater efficiency, at a higher rate, for a fraction of what it once cost. “We've had families that were seen years ago where it looks like there was something going on in the family... and we didn't find anything,” said Nuk. “Now we go back to test that same family [and] we're actually picking up mutations because the technology has improved so much.” Though many remain to be studied, Nuk and her team can now detect rogue genes causing numerous cancers including ovarian, breast, and colon. The lead geneticist added that the services offered by the program are twofold; genetic testing to identify individuals carrying mutated genes, and the provision of personalized care plans for those at increased cancer risk. “If we can figure out someone's at higher risk... we have a much better chance of offering better outcomes for the patient,” she said. People are provided with comprehensive information and a range of options, allowing them to make informed decisions about their next steps. As prevention is key to combating cancer, Nuk and her team will discuss and propose to their patients appropriate screening options, such as mammograms or MRIs, as well as preventative measures like vaccines and surgeries suited to their respective conditions. In turn, Nuk added that if one treatment can be given over another more invasive one, this will ultimately result in a better quality of life for individuals and benefit the overall health-care system. Since its inception in 1997, the prevention program has not only saved thousands of lives but also reduced health-care costs for taxpayers, freed up time and resources for other cancer patients, and alleviated the burden on B.C.'s hospitals. Benn and her sisters benefited from this very program. “My older sister did have the gene and decided to go through with the surgery and had her stomach removed,” she said. “[It] was riddled with cancer and she's still living today.” Her other sister, luckily, tested negative for the CDH1 mutation. Benn herself, facing a significant breast cancer risk from possessing the gene, opted for a preventative mastectomy. Reflecting on her journey, the self-proclaimed “cancer avoider” acknowledges the challenges she faced, including the grief of losing her sister and the uncertainty that followed her surgery. However, she strongly recommends the importance of prioritizing preventative care. “To have that knowledge and to be willing to [use it] is so important,” said Benn. “I know a lot of people avoid going to the doctor, especially when you might be feeling completely healthy, but you don't know what else is happening in your body. “Having a screening place that you can go to determine if you have a history of any kind of illness that you can prevent it in advance, why wouldn't you go?”

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