‘Nigeria losing the big war against cancer’

Nigeria may be losing the big war against cancer as evidence on ground points to the country’s lack of readiness in the management of the disease that has since been declared a global epidemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

BDSUNDAY learnt that in spite of the scary cancer statistics in the country, near absence of infrastructure and cancer specialists combine to keep the death ratio from the disease high, even as awareness level is still low.

Remi Ajekigbe, a professor of Radiotherapy & Oncology and consultant radiotherapist and oncologist, Department of Radiation Biology, Radiotherapy, Radioagnosis and Radiography, College of Medicine, University of Lagos and Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), told BDSUNDAY in an interview that Nigeria was faring badly in cancer management, stating that the country currently has only two functional cancer machines for a population of over 170 million people.

“Nigeria is not faring well at all. It’s not doing well. If you are to score Nigeria over 10, maybe you’ll give it 2/10. We are many in Nigeria, over 170 million, and we have only two cancer machines working, while some single hospitals in Britain have nine machines even outside London. Nine machines in a single hospital and a whole country has just two machines functioning well. So, we are not doing well,” said Ajekigbe.

Available statistics show that Nigeria has one of the worst cancer death ratios in the whole world, 4 in 5 cases. Out of over 100,000 people diagnosed with cancer annually in the country, about 80,000 die from the disease, amounting to 240 Nigerians every day or 10 Nigerians every hour dying from cancer, according to WHO.

Furthermore, a recent WHO report notes that cervical cancer, which is virtually 100 percent preventable, kills one Nigerian woman every hour. Breast cancer now kills 40 Nigerians daily, up from 30 daily in 2008. Prostate cancer kills 26 Nigerian men daily, up from 14 daily in 2008. These three common cancers alone kill 90 Nigerians daily.

According to Ajekigbe, even though the cancer awareness in the country is growing basically due to cooperation of the media, the survival rate is still low because patients present late.

“If you see patients presenting for the first time in Nigeria, if you take their pictures abroad and show to doctors there, they will look at it as if you are a magician or mad or both. Then, they would ask you, what would you do? They have never seen anything like that before because patients there present their cancer very early. But here, our cancers can be presented in their late stages. 75 to 80 percent of the cases are in stages three and four when the patients are almost passing on,” he said.

“Our patients present late. Number one, they believe it is somebody who has caused it. I don’t know, maybe witchcraft or the wicked woman. So, the doctor is not the first port of call, it’s the witch doctor or even the church or Imam, but unfortunately, the church is not helping matters,” he said.

Calling for more awareness campaigns, Ajekigbe said, “Honestly, the press is doing very well but maybe they need to do more. I don’t know how many publications we have in local languages. For women in the rural areas to know this, we must communicate it to them in the language they would understand. More people are in rural areas, so how many of these things we are saying are in local languages? That is what we are saying. They are not reaching the grassroots. They are not educating where the people really are. We think it’s only Lagos or Abuja and that’s the end but that is very wrong.”

Considering the high cost of cancer management, which is also another reason for the extremely high death ratio, Ajekigbe called on government to allocate an oil block to cancer management.

“The proceeds from the oil block will cover early detection and treatment. That is, it will cover cancer screening for both male and female. It will help in buying more machines, the facilities and equipment that we use for cancer treatment. It will also assist in training manpower – radiotherapists, therapy radiographers, medical physicists, biomedical engineers and oncology nurses,” said Ajekigbe.

“Then, there will be more centres in virtually every state in the country and it would not just be one machine to a teaching hospital, it will be two or three at a centre. Most of these machines break down quite often and when they break down, we stay for up to six months at times before they are repaired. With that wasted time, patients will be suffering and even dropping dead. Once cancer manifests, all hands must be on deck to see the patient survives. These limitations make survival almost impossible,” he said.

Globally, the disease burden of cancer doubled between 1975 and 2000, and in 2010, cancer became the number one killer disease of mankind. It is set to double again by 2020 and nearly triple by 2030, according to reports. By 2030, it is projected that one in every two persons will be diagnosed of cancer in their lifetime.

 

CHUKS OLUIGBO & CHINWE AGBEZE