• Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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‘No radiotherapy cancer treatment machine in South-South, centre’

radiotherapy machine

A cancer fighting centre, Project PINK BLUE has lamented that the entire South-South geopolitical Zone of Nigeria has no single working radiotherapy cancer treatment machine for effective treatment.

Runcie Chidebe the executive director of the centre, in a statement said the total lack of a radiotherapy machine has brought untold hardship for the cancer patients in the region and is stalling the fight against cancer in Nigeria.

“There is no single working radiotherapy cancer treatment machine in the whole of South-South of Nigeria. If a woman who lives in Yenegoa gets a breast cancer diagnosis, she may need to travel to Sokoto to get radiotherapy treatment. If a man is diagnosed with prostate cancer in Okirika, he may need to travel to Ibadan or Enugu for radiotherapy treatment and a young boy diagnosed of childhood cancer will have to travel to Abuja or Zaria for radiotherapy treatment”, Chidebe stated.

“This is a shame that a region that produces the greatest resources for the country does not have one single radiotherapy machine for effective cancer treatment”, he lamented.

Chidebe noted that cancer has become a critical public health problem in Nigeria with 115,950 new cases of cancer and 70,327 cancer deaths in 2018.

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He also explained that prostate cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death in Nigeria, while breast is the first and cervical cancer the second. According to him, Prostate cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in Nigerian men with 13,078 new cases which is 29.1 per cent and 5,806 deaths in 2018.

The Executive Director therefore called on the Ministry of Niger Delta and all stakeholders to address the problem and give cancer patients in South-South Nigeria a second chance at life.

He said if the issue of cancer is not immediately placed in the front burner of national, regional and state health plan, Nigeria will continue to lose human resources.

 

Godsgift Onyedinefu, Abuja