Israel-Pakistan cooperation gives Afghan children a chance to survive cancer

The program is notable because neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan has diplomatic relations with Israel.

Children in Afghanistan are being given a chance to survive a potentially deadly eye cancer through an extraordinary international effort led by an Israeli team working with medical centres in Pakistan.

Doctors from Sheba Medical Center, Israel's biggest hospital, teamed up with Pakistani medical centres to create the Retinoblastoma Silk Road Program, in which Afghan children diagnosed with the deadly cancer are transported across the border into Pakistan for lifesaving treatment.

Retinoblastoma is a rare malignant eye cancer mostly found in  children up to age five. In high-income countries, where children with the disease can receive a variety of treatments, almost all survive, although many lose the affected eye. However, in low-income countries, survival rates are below 50%. The World Health Organization is aiming for a 60% global survival rate by 2030.

In Afghanistan, about 100 new cases of the cancer are diagnosed every year, but the country lacks the medical infrastructure to administer the necessary treatments.

Professor Ido “Didi” Fabian, an expert in ocular tumour treatment at the Sheba Medical Center, spearheaded the effort to transport Afghan children with the disease into Pakistan for treatment. He had been conducting a study into the cancer in 2017, when he noticed a particularly strong need for help in Afghanistan.

However, after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021, it became much more difficult for Afghans to obtain permission to leave the country. Fabian felt he had to help and saw an opportunity to transport children and their families into Pakistan to receive treatment.

“If you don’t treat it in an effective way, the child will die,” Fabian said. “Not only lose vision, not only lose an eye or both eyes, but the child will die … They don’t have any treatment centres in Afghanistan.”