ESMO Women for Oncology 2016: a very personal tale of my professional life in Asia

In Thailand, 30 years ago, when I started my career as the first medical oncologist at the Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, cancer was considered to be an incurable disease and treatment with chemotherapy was generally considered ineffective. In the Department of Medicine, the only cancers that received chemotherapy were the haematological malignancies, and these were treated by haematologists. Solid tumours such as breast, lung and colorectal cancers were treated by surgeons and radiation therapists. During that period there was a limited number of chemotherapeutic agents available and no good supportive medicines such as the new antiemetics and growth factor support. In the West, medical oncology was established in USA and Europe around 1960 and this initiative led to many improvements in cancer care, especially in cancer research. In 1986, there were only two medical oncologists in Thailand. I myself worked at the Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University; the other one worked at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bangkok. Both of us had started working in oncology in Thailand at the same period.We took care of cancer patients with chemotherapy and hormonal therapy, giving several lectures and organising conferences together with the surgeons and radiation oncologists. Under the support of WHO …