By John Ogunlela
Practically all radiotherapy machines in Nigeria have broken down except just one. Two are under active repairs while the rest gather dust, leaving a lengthy queue of cancer patients who need radiation treatment in agony. Women from the age of 40 and men from the age of 60 upwards make up the bulk of cancer patients and cancer somewhat does not strike for what you did or didn’t do.
How this trend has come to define our national healthcare system is heartbreaking. The radiation therapy wards are always full. As of now, patients from Edo area and those from the north have flowed into the NSIA- cancer center the best cancer treatment center in West Africa and the one with the functional and serviceable machine. The place is overflowing as we speak and the visibly overworked doctors there are only trying to not get overwhelmed. Years back, the radiotherapy machine at UI remained in disuse for years for a surprisingly simple reason: it needed a replacement of its Caesium-137 cartridge – the source of the gamma radiation the machine applies to cancer sites. They needed something like N2m at the time to buy a replacement (it’s about the size of a cube of sugar. Should be around N25m these days). The hospital could not raise that money and so the machine remained down and cancer patients were dying. It is as impossible as that in Nigeria.
Maybe the new government should devise a strategy bringing in private investors into radiotherapy clinics set up. The experts are available to operate and do some levels of repairs and the country has a fairly good number of oncologists to run such facilities. Nigeria even has radiology schools. Personnel is not a problem except in few cases where you need to fix advanced functions – and that occurs just once in a while. N12 to N15 billion will set up a world class radiotherapy clinic and we have the people to bring everything you need for it together from both local and foreign sources within just weeks.
We talk about saving the naira by reducing imports but here is an opportunity to combine that with saving lives, yet we ignore it. People buy loads of dollars to go for cancer treatment in India, Israel or the West – the same treatment they will get in Ibadan or Kano or Aba at an even lower cost if we do what we should. Note that cancer patients receiving treatments while at home with their families and loved ones is also a great healthcare support. Going abroad for treatment may sound glamorous but it piles risk factors that home treatment mitigates. A lot of health conditions respond better to medical treatments when the patient has a good emotional support.
Women should rise up in advocacy of this cause because they are 65% of cancer patients, in my own observation while men above the age of 60 come next at about 30%. The rest of the patients consist of the outliers – kids as young as four, younger people and even teenagers. Cancer is something that can affect any family without warning and it strikes all the way across social classes.
Cancer is killing Nigerians and the reason is more of unavailability of radiation treatment, not the affordability of the care.
_Ogunlela, enjoys writing & blogs extensively on science, technology & trending issues_
