Containing The Cancer Threat

Nigeria recently joined the rest of the world to celebrate yet another World Cancer Day. Marked every fourth day of February by the United Nations, the day features various health campaigns on cancer across the world, all aimed at significantly reducing death and illness resulting from the ailment by 2020.

The World Cancer Day 2013 was celebrated with the theme: ‘Dispel Damaging’ Myths and Misconceptions about Cancer. These myths have been listed as part of target five of the World Cancer Declaration 2008 under the tagline ‘Cancer – Did you know?’ They include: Cancer is just a health issue; Cancer is a disease of the wealthy, elderly and developing countries; Cancer is a death sentence; and Cancer is my fate.

Indeed, for Nigeria and the rest of the developing world, no theme could have been more apt, especially considering that a lot of people in these parts had, until recently, seen cancer as the white man’s disease and any confirmed affliction was readily regarded as a hopeless case.

It is true that cancer is not among those medical conditions for which there are known cures, but it has also been discovered that early detection and treatment of the disease has saved the lives of so many patients.

Sadly, in the whole of the South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria where the activities of oil and gas firms have caused enormous environmental pollution and predisposed more people to cancer, only one cancer screening centre exists at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH).

While the institution offered free screening during this year’s World Cancer Day and appealed for donations to enable it upgrade to the extent it could treat cancer, governments, oil and gas companies, and public-spirited individuals should as a matter of urgency take advantage of the initiative of the university to save more lives.

A few years ago, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) announced its plan to build a Cancer Treatment Centre in Port Harcourt because of the prevalence of the causative elements in the state. This appeal for public donations failed to attract the needed response.

To check the spread of cancer cases, governments and civil society groups will need to embark on routine enlightenment campaigns to create the necessary awareness and to make them go for screening and early treatment.

On the other hand, report of the selection of only six diagnostic laboratories to service about 160 million Nigerians comes across as a joke. If therefore each of these centres attends to an average of 26.5 million people, many Nigerians will have nowhere to go.

Rather than concentrate all efforts on equipping just six far-flung centres, the technical agreement between the Federal Ministry of Health and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for the procurement of new radiotherapy and nuclear medicine equipment at these designated hospitals, should be made to establish more treatment centres across the country to make them more accessible to the people.

In Nigeria, the high rate of mortality among cancer patients has been attributed to the fact that such cases were mainly caused when the disease is allowed to get to advanced stages when only radiotherapy and palliative care can be administered.

Apart from some environmental factors that have to do with the sun and a few others, the failure of people to depend on local food and worry less have developed in many, the cancer causing gene. Indeed, processed or genetically modified foods are particularly suspected.

Cigarettes, alcoholic drinks and hard drugs have been known to cause breast and cervical cancers in women, while also being responsible for the prostate, lung and liver cancers that are common in men.

In addition to the ongoing overseas training of some Nigerian medical personnel under the IAEA-sponsored Fellowship programmes in oncology, the Federal Government should step up support for the Nigerian Cancer Research Network, whose goal is to encourage scientists develop a cure for cancer through research into the anti-cancer properties of such local vegetables as okra, tomatoes among others.