Drawing blood cancer diagnoses when resources are scarce

How can you treat a disease that you don’t know you have? You can’t.

Blood cancers like leukaemia and lymphoma account for one in every 10 cancers diagnosed. In children, it drops to one in every two. These cancers are treatable if caught early. But in some parts of the world – including within Australia – the resources needed to accurately diagnose them aren’t always unavailable.

Diagnosis relies on flow cytometry – a technology that uses antibodies to identify cancer cells. But flow cytometry machines are expensive to run, require specialised training to use, and aren’t accessible in many parts of the world. So patients in resource-poor settings go undiagnosed, untreated, and unseen.

Ailie Ross is a biomedical researcher at James Cook University Townsville. She has spent two decades working in pathology labs, and now she’s drawing on that experience to solve a critical problem: how do we diagnose blood cancers accurately when resources are limited?

Ailie is working to combat health inequity in Australia and overseas. Accurate diagnosis is about transfusing knowledge and resources to places where they’re needed most.

When we know the problem, we can treat patients effectively. And that changes lives.

Originally aired 21st July, 2026.

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