Mafalda Soto, a Galician pharmacist, spent nearly a decade in Malawi and Tanzania, where she witnessed the harsh reality faced by people with albinism, whose lives are marked by discrimination and an extremely high rate of skin cancer.
“Nine out of ten people with albinism in Africa die before the age of 30 from skin cancer. But their greatest enemy remains ignorance: the lack of information and the superstitions that affect their entire lives,” says Soto, who is also the co-founder of UMOA Cosmetics.
In 2017, Soto co-founded Beyond Suncare with the aim of providing a comprehensive response: developing tailored sunscreens, creating local laboratories for social inclusion, and training healthcare personnel in primary care, among other activities. Recognized by the United Nations and other international organizations, Beyond Suncare has also contributed to making sunscreens part of the WHO's list of essential medicines and has created a cosmetics brand, Umoa, to support the work of its NGO.
