Radiotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that makes use of beams of intense energy to kill cancer cells. It is also usually used to shrink tumors, cure cancer and also reduce ist chances of coming back.
In a country that has over 200 million population and over 120,000 new cancer cases recorded yearly and 78,000 deaths in 2020 alone caused by cancer- related complications, one will expect the country to be well equipped for cancer treatments. Sadly that is not the case as this was made known by the the Director-General of the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority, Dr Yau Idris, at the 2024 World Cancer Day Symposium themed ‘Economy, Tax and Cancer Control: The Exit of Pharmaceutical Companies from Nigeria,” which was organised by Project Pink Blue in Abuja.
He lamented about the state of the nation when it comes to cancer care. He said “We have serious problems, we have nothing to celebrate today but to lament. Looking at the case of Nigeria, we have only 14 radiotherapy centres in the country, nine of them belong to the government, only five of them belong to private, and only six of them are licensed by the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority, which means the others are not safe.
“In terms of equipment, Nigeria has only seven Linacs (Linear accelerators), for a population of 200 million people. South Africa has 92, and Egypt has 76.
“Even the 14 (radiotherapy centres) we have are not functioning, because today, they are functioning, tomorrow they are not functioning,”.
He also talked about the lack of enough Gamma cameras in the country. A Gamma camera is specifically used to produce functional scans of the brain, lungs, thyroid, liver, skeleton, gallbladder and kidneys during cancer treatment.
However, something as important as this is insufficient in the Nigerian Health scene. Speaking on this, Dr Yau Idris said “If you go to the Nuclear Medicine, we have only two Nuclear Medicine centres that have gamma cameras and both of them are down at the National Hospital, Abuja, and the University College Hospital, Ibadan. Virtually, there’s no gamma camera in Nigeria that is working, whereas a country like Tunisia with a population of twenty-something million has about 14 of them working.”
Nevertheless, there is hope for Nigerians as the federal Government has recently concluded the plans to build 6 new cancer centres across the 6 geopolitical zones in the country. The Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Tunji Alausa made this known.
In his words he said, “The government has concluded plans to build six new cancer centres across each of the six geopolitical zones in our country.
“The cancer centres will be built at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu; Amadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Zaira; Federal Tertiary Hospital, Katsina; University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin; University of Jos Teaching Hospital, Jos; and the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Lagos,” Dr Alausa commented.
He also stated the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare has been able to get additional funds to the N20bn appropriated three years ago for the building of the cancer centres.
According to him “ The amount that was appropriated has depreciated, there was no way we could use the N20bn to build the cancer centres, we had to make a presentation to the President and the National Assembly to give us another budget allocation to build the six cancer centres.
“We have gotten the additional funding that we need. The groundbreaking will happen in the next several weeks,”
Dr Tunji Alusa also revealed that there has been talks of collaboration with various pharmaceutical companies such as Clinton Health Access Initiative Pfizer, Roche, and Johnson & Johnson for the offering of 50 per cent discount on some of the cancer chemotherapy.
