Dr Okumu: Oncologist changing the game in bone cancer treatment

Kenya has only two orthopaedic oncologists, and Dr Nicholas Okumu (pictured) is one of them. This is quite an impressive achievement, one might think.

Yet, nothing about him – at least when you see him – immediately signals this distinction. Dressed in khaki trousers, a contemporary shirt (without a tie), and a black fleece jacket, Okumu is as down-to-earth as they come.

This is not the first time the doctor has been involved in a pioneering procedure. In 2023, he played a central role in the first limb salvage procedure (with a prosthesis) performed on a bone cancer patient at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH).

The patient’s leg had initially been earmarked for amputation, but Okumu, assisted by a skilled team, expertly removed the tumour, restored blood supply with a vascular graft, and reconstructed the patient’s femur using a customised prosthesis to restore limb function.

Dr Okumu graduated from the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania with an undergraduate degree in medicine 20 years ago. He excelled in two areas: surgery and Obstetrics and Gynaecology (OBGYN). “I received a full scholarship to return to the University of Dar-es-Salaam to study OBGYN. However, I chose not to accept it because my obstetrics rotation during my internship in Embu wasn’t as enjoyable as I had hoped. I decided to focus on surgery instead,” he explains.

He went on to complete his Master’s in orthopaedics at the University of Nairobi, becoming an orthopaedic surgeon in 2012.

In 2020, Dr Okumu was appointed Head of Orthopaedics at KNH. One of the changes he aimed to implement was to divide the department into sub-specialties. “We were a general orthopaedic unit. Every surgeon would handle everything. My thinking was that without sub-specialties, we fail to develop expertise in specific areas. “We decided that one of these sub-specialties should be orthopaedic oncology. The only issue was that no one wanted to take it up, so as Head of Department, the responsibility fell on me.”

Dr Okumu is an orthopaedic oncology fellow with the British Orthopaedic Oncology Society.

More recently, he was nominated as a Global Surgery Advocacy Fellow by the University of Global Health Equity. His fellowship project has led to the publication of a guide titled Early Detection of Musculoskeletal Sarcomas. “The guide is designed to equip primary healthcare workers to read X-rays and recognise symptoms, enabling them to detect and refer bone cancers as early as possible,” explains Dr Okumu who practices at KNH and also runs a weekly clinic at AAR Hospital.