About 40, 000 Nigerian children are diagnosed of different types of childhood cancers every year, out of which 80 per cent die due to poor detection and clinical treatment.
This was disclosed by the founder of the Medicaid Cancer Foundation, and First Lady of Kebbi state, Dr. Zainab-Shinkafi Bagudu, in an interview with THISDAY in Abuja, shortly after a roundtable meeting organised by the foundation to mark this year’s childhood cancer month.
She said about 80 per cent of the cases in Nigeria and other low income countries end up in deaths unlike the high income countries where the cure rate of cancer in children is now about 85 per cent.
“In Nigeria, the prevalence is under-documented, but about 40,000 children with cancer die every year and we have other undocumented numbers. Globally there are over 400,000 childhood cancer cases.
“Again that is under-documented because of the poor diagnosis that we are talking about and low index of cases from clinicians and parents. Usually when children have fever, they tend to treat malaria and other infections,” she said.
According to her, the under-documentation was because of poor diagnosis and low index of suspicion from clinicians and even parents some of whom are unaware that cancer exists in children. She said some clinicians tend to treat malaria when children have recurrent fever before thinking of cancer.
She said the best ways to tackle childhood cancer in Nigeria include, awareness creation, high index of suspicion by clinicians.
She added that government needs to train more physicians in the field of cancer treatment.
The First Lady said the roundtable was organised to bring key stakeholders such as civil society organisations, survivors, parents of survivors, those doing fund raising for childhood cancers , donor agencies, government officials , the academia, medical associations and doctors treating patients to together to listen to their challenges and also chart away forward.
She lauded the federal government for including pediatric cancers in national programmes like the cancer health fund, and the chemotherapy access programme.
While describing it as one of the major contributions of the federal government to cancer , she said cancer advocates were successful in the advocacy for the inclusion of child hood cancer in the list of beneficiaries of these programmes.
Also, Paediatric Oncologist at the National Hospital Abuja, Dr. Adewunmi Oyesakin, also said between 400, 000 to 500, 000 children are affected by childhood cancer annually globally with majority of them in developing countries and sub Saharan Africa.
When asked about the situation at the National Hospital in Abuja, Oyesakan said that there were growing number of cases of cancer among children resulting from tests conducted at the facility.
She said some contributory factors for early death and mortality from childhood cancers were challenges with early diagnosis, prompt treatment, and completing the treatment.
Onyebuchi Ezigbo
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