Stecia Kasemiire

Stecia Kasemiire is a Ugandan medical doctor and Mastercard Foundation Scholar pursuing an MSc in Applied Cancer Science at the University of Oxford. She is a member of St Cross College and is passionate about breast cancer research and improving cancer care for women in Uganda.

Stecia holds a Bachelor’s degree in Medicine and Surgery from Uganda Christian University. There, she became the first student from the Faculty of Medicine to serve as Vice Guild President. She also led HIV awareness campaigns to end stigma among university students, work that led to the launch of the Own Your Future Initiative.

As President of the Medical Interns at Mityana General Hospital, Stecia launched an annual sickle cell fundraising campaign. It secured essential medicines for young patients and helped reduce child mortality from sickle cell disease in the district.

Stecia now works as a Medical Officer at UMC Victoria Hospital in Bukoto, Uganda. Alongside this, she volunteers with the Ananda Center for Cancer Research, contributing to breast cancer awareness and research. As a Global Educator with the Know Your Lemons Foundation, she has led breast cancer awareness campaigns in communities across Uganda. She has also volunteered at the Uganda Cancer Institute, managing cancer patients directly. There, she saw firsthand the challenges facing Ugandan women: late diagnosis and limited access to therapeutics, especially for breast cancer. These experiences solidified her resolve to pursue a career in cancer research.

At Oxford, Stecia hopes to build the skills to advance research on triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive subtype that disproportionately affects young African women. She plans to specialise in oncology, with the goal of designing interventions suited to Uganda’s context. For Stecia, every step serves one mission: to ensure no woman in Uganda faces a cancer diagnosis without hope, access, or care.