Development of nuclear medicine in Africa

Over the past 50 years, nuclear medicine and molecular imaging (NMMI) have grown tremendously across the world and now collectively play an important role in the elaboration and implementation of management strategies for prioritized public health issues [1, 2]. In many countries during this period, critical advances in technology, computing software, radiopharmacy and instrumentation have boosted the impact of NMMI in multiple medical fields. This heightened impact has led increasingly to awareness of nuclear medicine as fundamental in the diagnosis and treatment of many disorders and diseases [3–8]. As part of this momentum, during the last three decades the continent of Africa has shown consistent development of NMMI. However, upon close analysis of the progress of NMMI in Africa, we noticed that South Africa and North African countries have exhibited development profiles similar to those of the developed world [3–12]. In contrast, the growth of NMMI in many other countries has remained rather limited to the expansion of basic clinical services provided by studies with 99mTc and treatment with Iodine 131. The development of NMMI in the African continent has always been strongly linked to efficient existing technical cooperation with, and support in various forms provided by, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) [13]. At the end of 2019, data from 44 African countries which share technical cooperation programs with the IAEA showed that 29 countries have at least one unit of NMMI and 1 country has only an in vitro radio immunoassay (RIA) unit. The remaining 14 countries have started feasibility studies, or are going to do so, for the implementation of their first unit. Only 5 countries have their own postgraduate programs in nuclear medicine for physicians, and 22 countries started training nuclear physicians abroad after the year 2000 (17 of these countries after 2004). This might be one of the main reasons why, in Africa, 17 countries started their first nuclear medicine unit during the period 2004–2019 (Fig. 1).