Experts at the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority and the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, NSIA-LUTH, Cancer Centre, has hinted on early detection of cancer as key for management and survival of the dreaded disease.
The experts who said people die from cancer due to late presentation urged Nigerians exhibiting signs of cancer to get treatment as soon as possible and to jettison the belief that cancer is always fatal.
The cancer experts spoke during an awareness walk they organised to commemorate the 2024 World Cancer Day, with the theme: “Close the Care Gap: Everyone Deserves Access to Cancer Care.”
In her submission, the Director of the NSIA-LUTH Cancer Centre, Dr. Lilian Ekpo, insisted that early detection was vital as it helps to save lives.
“People need to know about cancer, know the early signs, present early, and do screening so that we can save lives.
The challenge we have is that patients present late. They present late because, first, they are not aware of the signs and symptoms.
” The bleeding from the vagina, weight loss, and all the other symptoms associated with cancer are ignored, and people don’t present on time.
“Once you present late, the likelihood that the oncologists and the team of cancer care specialists will be able to achieve a cure is lower. So that is the challenge in Nigeria.
“The top four cancers we are dealing with are breast cancer, prostate cancer, cervical cancer, and colon cancer.”
She said the mortality rate was high in Nigeria, and there is a likelihood that an individual may die from the disease because of the quality of health care that individual receives.
“The perception of cancer in Nigeria, I think is slowly increasing and I emphasized the word slowly and that’s because a lot of people out there still see cancer as a death sentence.
She traced the rising incidence of cancer to lifestyle changes, adding that health trends were moving away from communicable diseases to a surge in noncommunicable diseases amid an acute manpower shortage in the health sector.
Ekpo said prostate, breast, prostate, cervical, and colon cancers are the top four cancers diagnosed in Nigeria.
“And that’s one of the core things that we’re trying to do at the centre through our constant awareness on different platforms, including the media and social media handles.
“We are trying to educate the public that cancer is not a death sentence, knowing that options are available.”
“In this centre, we also see a lot of head and neck cancers. I must confess that we do have very good outcomes in treating head and neck cancers.
