It has been reported that Cancer Disease kills 280,000 Nigerians in 4 years.

Speaking on the occasion of World Cancer Day been held today, the Nigerians suffering from the disease, said that apart from the dearth of equipment, specialised medical personnel and huge cost, there were only a few functioning health institutions to attend to them.

They lamented that even though cancer is treatable, especially when diagnosed at the early stage, many Nigerians with the disease still die due to the dearth of facilities, experts and high cost of treatment.

It was learnt that there are only seven cancer centres with functional machines, both public and private, in the country as against a minimum of 200 cancer centres or 600 units of radiotherapy machines that Nigeria is expected to have to meet the World Health Organisation (WHO) standard.

The hospitals are: Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba; University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin; Usmanu Danfodiyo Teaching...

WHO said that cancer is one of the leading causes of death globally and accounted for 8.8 million deaths in 2015.

An estimated 116,000 new cases of cancer and 41,000 cancer-related deaths, the world body said were recorded in Nigeria in 2018 alone.

World Cancer Day is an international event observed every February 4 to raise awareness on the disease and to encourage its prevention, detection and treatment.

Stakeholders insisted that inadequate experts, radiotherapy machines and high cost of treatment have remained a burden to health workers, cancer patients and their families. They attributed the high mortality rate from cancer in Nigeria to the above listed factors.

They stressed that the situation was compounded by the fact that less 100 oncologists operate in all the centres in the country.

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However, some cancer patients at the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) and Lagos University Teaching Hospital (NSIA-LUTH) reported that though they were getting standard treatment as they were seeing improvement, access to money or somebody to sponsor their treatment was a major problem to them.

Cancer is a generic term for a large group of diseases characterised by the growth of abnormal cells beyond their usual boundaries that can then invade adjoining parts of the body or spread to other organs.

The disease, according to experts, can affect almost every part of the body and has many anatomic and molecular subtypes that each requires specific management strategies.

The most common cancers are breast cancer, lung and bronchus cancer, prostate cancer, colon and rectum cancer, melanoma of the skin, bladder cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, kidney and renal pelvis cancer, endometrial cancer, leukemia, pancreatic cancer, thyroid cancer, and liver cancer, cervical cancer, among others.

On the admission of cancer patients, the chief medical director, National Hospital Abuja (NHA), Dr. Jaf Momoh, said that only 25 per cent of cancer patients seeking admission in the hospital do not get the service due to lack of space.

He, however, stated that the federal government was working on the expansion of the hospital to enable the management accommodate more patients.