2020 World Cancer Day: MMM wants FG to support incorporation of Gardasil

COMFORT EKELEME

As the world is set to celebrate 2020 World Cancer Day on February 4, Mass Medical Mission (MMM) has called on the Federal Government  to support the incorporation of Gardasil into the National Programme on Immunization.

MMM  is also seeking for support from stakeholders in order to expand the reach of the mobile system of preventing health care and to establish Comprehensive Cancer Centres (CCC) for the optimal care of confirmed cancer cases in Nigeria.

In a statement from the organisation, MMM said Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) were now responsible for majority of global deaths, with cancer being a leading cause of death and the single most important barrier to increasing life expectancy in every country of the world in the 21st century.

It also said to stem the cancer scourge called for urgent, concerted and consistent action by everyone in the fight against NCDs with cancer prevention and treatment as the fulcrum.

However, research shows that cancer is a very apt fulcrum because its risk factors include other killer diseases, such as Diabetes mellitus, hypertension, renal diseases, obesity, malaria, hepatitis, Human papilloma virus infection and HIV/AIDS as well as habits like smoking, physical inactivity and excessive alcohol intake. These risk factors are common to other NCDs.

World Cancer Day (WCD) is a global advocacy day dedicated to amplify the call for action and to rally the international community to end the injustice of preventable suffering from cancer.

It is marked on February 4 every year. 2020 marks the midway point of the 3-year ‘I Am and I Will’ campaign. ‘I Am and I Will’ is an empowering call-to-action urging for personal commitment and represents the power of individual action taken now to impact the future.

According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, there are over 18 million new cancer cases globally and 9.6 million cancer deaths every year (about 26,000 cancer deaths daily) and this number is projected to rise.

Furthermore, cancer is the most expensive disease globally and drives the poor and vulnerable victims deeper into poverty. The global economic toll of cancer in 2010 was 1.16 trillion dollars.

Sadly, 70per cent of cancer deaths occur in developing nations like Nigeria. Little wonder then, that Nigeria not only has the seventh lowest life expectancy globally, but is now also the poverty capital of the world.

Every day in Nigeria, 32 women die of breast cancer, 28 women die of cervical cancer and 16 men die from prostate cancer.  This holocaust of untimely death is due to late detection and inadequate treatment as a result of poor infrastructure and lack of organized system of preventive health care.

For instance, whilst India has over 200 Comprehensive Cancer Centres, Nigeria has none. In addition, Nigeria has less than ten radiotherapy machines to cater for its teeming population against the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation of at least one radiotherapy machine for every one million people.

To make matters worse, most of these machines are outmoded and are not functional. As a result, Nigerians spend over $200 million annually to seek treatment abroad more than thrice the amount needed to build a world-class Comprehensive Cancer Centre (CCC) locally.

To address this cancer problem, the National Cancer Prevention Programme (NCPP), a non-governmental initiative of Mass Medical Mission (MMM) pioneered community-based mass cervical cancer screening across the country, in 2007 and later incorporated other cancers.

Since then NCPP has screened, vaccinated and treated over 200,000 people and through the intensive awareness campaign has reached millions with awareness, in spite of its limited resources. This has contributed to a reduction of the overall cancer mortality in Nigeria from 240 deaths daily to 196 deaths daily between 2008 and 2018, according to World Health Organization (WHO) data.

Latest data from WHO also shows a reduction in breast cancer deaths from 40 daily to 32 daily between 2012 and 2018 as well as a decrease in prostate cancer death from 26 daily to 16 daily between 2012 and 2018.

For a better society