Founded by oncology researcher Minnaar, the HEAT (Hyperthermia: Equitable, Accessible Treatment) Foundation aims to bring the adjunctive cancer treatment into the public healthcare system, starting with women receiving treatment for locally advanced cervical cancer.
The foundation’s work is intended to support the treatment commitments set out in the national cervical cancer plan, which South Africa has finalised as Eliminate Cervical Cancer in South Africa: A Strategic and Implementation Framework 2026–2030 in alignment with the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) global goals.
It rests on three commitments:
Recent implementation updates have focused particularly on prevention and screening, but Minnaar says treatment remains essential.
“Vaccination protects the next generation, and screening helps prevent cancer through earlier detection.
“But neither can replace treatment for the woman who arrives at an oncology unit today with locally advanced disease,” says Minnaar.
“Treatment remains an important part of the elimination plan, and with the disease burden carried by our public health facilities, anything that helps us treat these women better will go a long way towards eliminating cervical cancer.”
The scale is not marginal: according to the Department of Health, about 11,000 South African women were diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2022, and roughly 6,000 died of it.
An analysis of National Cancer Registry data spanning 2011 to 2021 put national incidence at 30.4 cases per 100,000 women a year, peaking among women aged 55 to 64.
The WHO’s elimination threshold is four per 100,000.
Minnaar led a Phase III randomised controlled trial at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital through Wits University. It enrolled 210 women with locally advanced cervical cancer between 2014 and 2017 and followed them for five years.
About half were living with HIV — it was the first hyperthermia trial worldwide to include them — and 79% were unemployed.
All participants received standard chemoradiotherapy.
Half also received modulated electro-hyperthermia, a low-power radiofrequency technique that warms tumour tissue by a few degrees to make it more responsive to radiation and chemotherapy.
Five years after treatment, disease-free survival in the hyperthermia group was more than double that of the control group: 32% against 14%, and the difference was significant. Late side effects did not increase, and quality-of-life scores improved, showing a clear treatment payoff.
A cost-effectiveness analysis found an 82.2% probability of cost savings over three years, largely because recurrence and residual disease are expensive to treat.
The results were published in the journal Cancers in 2022 and in Frontiers in Oncology in 2025 and were presented internationally in 2024.
By improving disease control without adding treatment-related toxicity, Minnaar says, the adjunct may reduce the clinical and financial burden associated with persistent or recurrent disease later, making the benefit of treatment clearer for public facilities and patients.
She is direct about where hyperthermia does not belong.
“It is an adjunct. It runs alongside chemotherapy and radiation, never instead of them,” she says.
“Anyone offering it as a substitute for those treatments is doing something I will not defend.”
The foundation intends to install additional treatment units to widen access and extend research to other tumour types, building on the work already under way.
