Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

Lagos, Foundation partner on childhood cancer

By Adaku Onyenucheya
12 April 2018   |   4:22 am
The Lagos State Ministry of Health (LSMH) is set to partner with The Dorcas Cancer Foundation (TDCF) in its fight against childhood cancer.

A child suffering from cancer

The Lagos State Ministry of Health (LSMH) is set to partner with The Dorcas Cancer Foundation (TDCF) in its fight against childhood cancer.

According to World Health Organisation (WHO), globally, there are 160,000 new cases of cancer every year and 90,000 deaths recorded yearly for children under the age of 15, as Nigeria records an estimate of about 30,000 children diagnosed with cancer yearly.

The Founder, TDCF, Dr. Adedayo Joseph, told journalists that with the increase in childhood cancer and the lack of functional health systems in the country, as well as lack of finances to afford treatment, the foundation is partnering with the state government to help reduce the scourge of cancer by providing the necessary assistance to cancer patients.

She said every day children are diagnosed with cancer, without any means of getting treatment for the disease, which sometime could eventually lead to their death.

“The vision of the organisation is to make sure that every child that develops cancer in Nigeria would survive and we are working towards it. We are partnering with private individuals and organisations, government, parastatals and what we want to do is to achieve that goal, which is through creating health systems that work, so that there is early detection, accurate diagnosis and that there should be treatment available, access to centres for treatment and funding for the treatment,” she stressed.

The Director, Disease Control, Lagos State, Dr. Erinosho Ashimiu, said the state government is proud of the efforts the foundation is putting in place to ensure childhood cancer is reduced in the state.

“We are very proud of what the Foundation is doing and their achievements and the state government is ready to work with them. Basically, what they are doing is to provide quality services to our people in which they are benefiting, and it is something that the state government is delighted about, so we are going to work with the organization,” he assured.

He said there is need for collaborative efforts to create more awareness and enlightening the populace on the prevention of cancer, as most people are ignorant of the causes of the disease, which leads to late presentation.

“We want to make sure people present very early, because if they do, it will be easier than presenting late, so creating awareness, making sure that people are diagnosed promptly and early and then place them on treatment. You know the prognosis for cancer cure in children is higher than adult, so they will get out of it, and you can detect early and treat them,” he added.

0 Comments