The grim fate of cancer patients in Nigeria

Last week, BusinessDay Sunday reported that Nigeria was faring badly in cancer management, as currently, the country has only two functional cancer machines for a population of over 170 million people.  One of the Machines is located at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) while the other is at Sokoto. The report quoted Remi Ajekigbe, a professor of Radiotherapy & Oncology and consultant radiotherapist and oncologist, Department of Radiation Biology, Radio therapy, Radioagnosis and Radiography, College of Medicine, University of Lagos and Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), as saying “Nigeria is not faring well at all. It’s not doing well. If you are to score Nigeria over 10, maybe you’ll give it 2/10. We are many in Nigeria, over 170 million, and we have only two cancer machines working, while some single hospitals in Britain have nine machines even outside London. Nine machines in a single hospital and a whole country has just two machines functioning well. So, we are not doing well.”

Available statistics show that Nigeria has one of the worst cancer death ratios in the whole world with 4 deaths in 5 cases. Out of over 100,000 people diagnosed with cancer annually in the country, about 80,000 die from the disease, amounting to 240 Nigerians every day or 10 Nigerians every hour dying from cancer, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Furthermore, a recent WHO report notes that cervical cancer, which is virtually 100 percent preventable, kills one Nigerian woman every hour. Breast cancer now kills 40 Nigerians daily, up from 30 daily in 2008. Prostate cancer kills 26 Nigerian men daily, up from 14 daily in 2008. These three common cancers alone kill 90 Nigerians daily.

Of course, it is also true that there is as yet not enough awareness of the disease in the country and majority of patients who come for treatment come in very late when the disease has ravaged their bodies, with little hope of survival. Another reason for the extremely high death ration is the poverty in the land and the high cost of cancer management.

However, this week, while doing a follow-up of the report, BusinessDay Sunday discovered the remaining two functional cancer treatment machines in country – in Lagos and Sokoto – have broken down due to pressure from excessive usage with remote chances of their immediate repair, leaving many cancer patients, including those from Northern and Eastern Nigeria stranded and at death’s mercy.

The deplorable state of healthcare in the country is a longstanding problem the country has been unable to solve. In time past, virtually all military coup speeches were laced with talks about our hospitals becoming mere dispensing clinics. But each of those military regimes has left the hospitals worse than they met them. The effect is that overtime, the health sector is almost comatose and the elected democratic governments since 1999 have only paid lip services to the improvement of healthcare in the country.  Haven overseen the collapse of the country’s healthcare, virtually all politicians, top government personnel and the elite have abandoned the hospitals and seek medical attention outside the country. Sadly for the 98 or 99 percent of Nigerians who cannot afford to travel abroad for medical care, they are left to their devices and at the mercy of the decaying health facilities and ill-motivated medical personnel that run them.

Even President Buhari with his trumpeted change agenda flies out to the United Kingdom for treatment for even little infections. The message that sends out is that even our leaders cannot trust the quality of healthcare in the country. What can be more unpatriotic than that? The president’s actions also serves the notice that the fortunes of our hospitals are not about to change.  No wonder some argue that the only time education and health care will improve in the country is when all government personnel are banned from seeking for medical treatment abroad or sending their children to study abroad.

We urge the government to pity the plight of the many cancer sufferers in Nigeria who cannot afford to travel outside the country for treatment and improve the infrastructure for the management and treatment of cancer in Nigeria. Cancer can and is being managed effectively such that being diagnosed with the disease is no longer a death sentence. Nigeria cannot be one of the few countries that allow its citizens with cancer to die painful deaths without care.