Zimbabwe: In Zimbabwe, Free Cancer Screenings Are Widely Available. Treatment Isn’t.

Harare, Zimbabwe — The country’s screening initiatives help women detect cervical and breast cancers early — but what happens next?

In 2018, Pelagia Chikwera, a soft-spoken mother of three, attended a free cervical cancer screening at a hospital in Harare. “There was an advertisement about a free cancer screening, and I decided to go since it was free,” she says. “Little did I know that the results would come back positive.”

She was diagnosed with stage 2B cervical cancer, which means the…