The Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) recently organized a theoretical framework among young researchers on efforts to curb Cervical Cancer through increasing vaccination against Human Papilloma virus in young girls ages 9-15 years and screening for human papilloma virus in women 30-65 years, at an event titled “4 Girls and Women Innovation BootCamp”.
Speaking at the Institute while reacting to a series of presentations by young Researchers, the President of Nigerian Cancer Society Dr. Alhassan Adamu Umar stated that, ” Cervical Cancer is one Cancer that is 98% preventable and it is a major killer of women, it is the second most common cancer not only in Nigeria but all over the world”.
However, the President Dr. Umar further called on the Federal Government to assist more in providing health care for Patients, according to him, “looking at the illiteracy rate, over 50% of the population are not educated with 80% of individuals paying for healthcare themselves, the National Health Insurance cover is still not enough to cover all Nigerian.
Cancer is a very expensive disease to treat and majority of Nigerian can not afford to treat cancer. He also said one reason the Federal Government introduced the ‘Cancer Healthcare Fund’ is to address the three major and common cancer types prevalent in our environment and to support the indegent cancer patients especially those who can not afford to foot their healthcare bills , even thou the implementation of the funding is encouraging, as so many indegent cancer patients are yet to get access to it”.
The Director of Research, NIMR Professor Oliver Ezechi stated that about 22 to 33 women die of Cervical Cancer while royghly 28 are been diagnosis of it everyday.
This is a disease that is about 100% preventable once we vacinated.
Professor Ezechi also stated that seven (7) teams were chosen by the institute to work and solve problems among the local cities they have gone through and the Institute is going to take and look at 60 Local Government Areas across the country.
He went on to say that in each of these Local Governments 50 girls will screened and vacinated. at the end of which a report will be present to the Ministry of Health.
This seems to be the best way to address, approach and solve the problem, we did that with HIV and is working, people test their HIV status at home”.
Dr. Juliet Iwelunmor from saint Luis University in her talk with Journalists said ” our goal is to end cervical cancer in Nigeria, no woman should not be dyeing of Cervical Cancer. we are here to ask Nigerian girls what we can do to ensure no other woman dies of cervical cancer, so the impingement of ideas on what they think we should be doing to ensure that we get more girls vaccinated and more women screened”.
Dr. Joseph Tucker from university of North Carolina said, ” Cervical Cancer is really killing women and girls in and it is a very important to conduct self sampling, HPV is all about prevention, young girls need to take vacation to be vaccinated against HPV and women need to be screened to detect early sign and symptoms to prevent cancer, vacation is very important for young girls ages 9-15″
Also on the other hand Dr. Nkiruka David Director of research and consultant (NIMR), said Human papilloma virus is the cause of Cervical Cancer, that means that is due to an infection of HPV however it is a sexually transmitted infection, it is transmitted during the exchange of body fluids, it is good not only to protect the girl child, but also the boy child that may accquire it and transmit, later, however the effect is more on the girl child, though the a child too needs to be protected by absentaining from sex, be faithful to one partner and use of protection during sex”.
The President of the Nigerian Cancer Society, Dr. Adamu Umar urged the Federal Government to be up and doing on committing more resources, to create policies that will make cancer treatments affordable, accessble and available to the common man.