CCII seeks quality cancer registries

A non-governmental organisation, Children with Cancer Intervention Initiative (CCII) has called for the establishment of high quality regional cancer registries in the six-geopolitical zones of Nigeria and other Sub-Saharan Africa to serve as effective public health instrument that patients could access care at affordable cost.

The organization also demanded for reliable, adequate data on the incidences of cancer and prompt coordination of research results from all over the world in the area of cancer and other related disease. It advocated for an efficient system and environment to care for patients through more funding into cancer management and other allied institutions.

Coordinator of CCII, Mrs. Honor Onyebuchukwu, who spoke at an event to mark the World Cancer Day in Lagos posited that stakeholders need to improve on the awareness methods on the disease, inform and educate the people to ensure that every other parameters necessary for attitudinal change which are favourable to cancer prevention is put in place. This, according to her is the foundation for effective cancer management.

Onyebuchukwu who is particularly concerned about the plights of children suffering from cancer further urged authorities to put in place measures that offer free medical care for children with cancer across the country.

“We are emphatically demanding for high quality regional cancer registries in the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria and other Sub-Saharan Africa. We believe that while development is going on in the area of diagnosis, development of curative drugs and general management of cancer patients; efforts or more efforts should be applied in the area of informing; educating, monitoring and other attitudinal changing parameters within the populace. The result will begin to encourage us when the rate of cancer incidence begins to go down while cancer survival rate continues to go up,” she stated.

In his presentations, a Partner Officer, Mr. Akin Opayinka, explained that in recent study to determine the present rate of cancer survival globally, an international team of researcher reviewed more that 300 cancer registries from 71 countries and about 37.5million patients diagnosed with one of 18 types of common cancer. He stated that the result succinctly observed that surviving cancer might depend on where people live in the world. Adding that the result shed light on the depth of disparity that exists in nations around the globe.

“Now it appears that your chances of surviving cancer is ultimately tied to which country you live in. For countries like the United States, Canada, Australia; New Zealand, Norway and Sweden, the five year cancer survival rate is as high as 90per cent in the last 15years. Unfortunately, this does not hold true around the rest of the world. In Nigeria and the Sub-Saharan Africa; our problem is not even that our survival rate are low; but the fact that we cannot even generate enough data to be rated. Responsibility of monitoring cancer survival rates even becomes more complex as the phenomenon of disparity is not just among nations but could also be found within nations.”

According to him, while continuous monitoring of global trends in cancer survival is crucial to assess the overall effectiveness of health systems worldwide to help policy makers plan better strategies for cancer control, the challenges of; data availability, low funding, and education must be well addressed.“Where accessible health care is provided through adequate funding of research and the making of the results available to the citizen, there will always be a tremendous increase in its survival rate,” he said.