Yvonne Joko Walburga Fru

Yvonne is a Commonwealth Scholar who joined the Nuffield Department of Population Health in January 2017, under the supervision of Dr. Max Parkin and Dr. Paul McGale. Her research is focused on breast cancer incidence, risk factors and survival in sub-Saharan Africa.

Yvonne studied Medicine at the University of Yaounde 1, Cameroon, where she graduated with highest honours. Upon completion, she worked as a Senior House Officer in the largest oncology unit in Douala, Cameroon, where she saw first-hand the plight of Cameroonian patients, often diagnosed at late stages, with  limited access to health care. This prompted her interest in cancer epidemiological research.

She then enrolled into the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she obtained her MSc in Epidemiology in 2014. Her MSc dissertation focused on the “Variation in breast cancer survival by tumour morphology among women diagnosed in England and Wales from 1979-2011”.

Following her MSc, she moved back to her home country where she worked part-time at a referral rural hospital, the Mbingo Baptist Hospital, helping build up a hospital based cancer registry. She then moved on to work with the Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric AIDS Foundation as Technical Officer for the North West Region -Cameroon,  where she helped set up and coordinate a pediatric HIV training centre to improve access to testing, treatment and follow-up for children exposed to HIV. She joined the NDPH from this role.