Govt to include cancer treatment under NHIS

WORRIED by the growing cases of cancer in the country, the Federal Government is perfecting plans to include cancer screening and treatment as part of the services offered by the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and make the scheme mandatory.

The Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, in an exclusive interview with The Guardian Sunday ahead of the World Cancer Day today, said: “The main thing that will help us is when the NHIS is made mandatory. It will help us raise enough money to include cancer as part of the diseases that are treated under the scheme.

“Cancer drugs are very expensive. We are discussing with companies to come into the country and establish industries. We plan to encourage them by granting them incentives and bulk purchase of the drugs for the cancer centres,” he said.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) survey for World Cancer Day released yesterday warned that more than half of all countries worldwide are struggling to prevent cancer and provide treatment and care to patients.

According to the WHO survey, this means that currently, many of the countries do not have functional cancer control plans that include prevention, early detection, treatment and care.

It said there is an urgent need to help countries reduce cancer deaths and provide appropriate long-term treatment and care to avoid human suffering.

Chukwu said the government also plans to acquire mobile cancer vehicle that will move from state to state to offer free cancer screening.

He added that the Federal Ministry of Health has developed some centres to offer free cancer screening in the six geo-political zones. The centres include: Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Nassarawa State; FMC Guzo in Zamfara State; National Obstetric Fistula Centre Abakiliki in Ebonyi State; University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Rivers State; Ondo FMC, Ondo and Gombe FMC, Gombe State.

He explained: “We presently have nine Federal Government hospitals with linear accelerator (for the treatment of cancer) and one private hospital, Eko Hospital. But we found one major constraint with human resources in medical physicist. We did not have enough medical physicists. They are the ones that calculate the dose of radiation and calibrate the machine to deliver the dose.

“We have begun to train medical physicists with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) curriculum. We have a $37 million agreement with IAEA to pay in five years, which we are trying to meet up. We have paid only $7 million in three years. We are working with them and have started training medical physicists.”

Chukwu said the government has been negotiating with the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation (GAVI) to make the three doses of cervical cancer vaccine available for Nigerian girls for only N1,600. He said the cervical cancer vaccination is yet to be included in the national immunisation schedule to avoid overloading the scheme, which is already being stretched by the polio eradication efforts.

The World Cancer Day is a yearly event initiated by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) that urges people, organisations and government agencies around the world to unite in the fight against the global cancer epidemic. This year, the campaign focuses on improving general knowledge of cancer and dispelling misconceptions about the disease.

According to the WHO, cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide. 7.6 million people died from cancer worldwide in 2008 and every year, almost 13 million cancer cases are diagnosed. Already, more than two-thirds of cancer cases and deaths occur in developing countries.

Research suggests that currently, a third of all cancer deaths are due to modifiable risks including tobacco use, obesity, alcohol and infections. If detected early, many types of cancer such as breast cancer and cervical cancer can be successfully cured.

The recent WHO survey on national capacity for non-communicable diseases, which included responses from 185 countries, revealed major gaps in cancer control, planning and services control plans with a budget to support implementation.

It noted that less than 50 per cent of countries have population-based cancer registries, which are critical to capture high-quality information on the numbers and types of cancer cases so that effective national policies for cancer control can be developed, implemented and evaluated.

Recently, political commitments from world leaders to address cancer have gained steam, including discussions at the national level of funding cancer treatment and care by raising taxes on tobacco and alcohol, which are known risk factors for some cancers.

In another development, vaccinators have defied the prevailing security challenges in some parts of the country and most areas in Northern Nigeria to reach millions of children aged between zero and five with the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV).

The Guardian reporters monitoring the on-going four-day National Immunisation Plus Days (NIPDs), which started on Saturday, February 2, 2013, report that the vaccinators employed by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) and trained with technical support from the United Nation Children Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), are pressing hard to reach the 50 million children target.

It was reliably gathered that some trained vaccinators had left their duty posts because of the security challenges, while others have been working under the fear of being molested or attacked by radical groups. It was also gathered that there has been high acceptance of the vaccine by most communities.

It was learnt that vaccinators have been allocated to communities and settlements with necessary logistics to avoid missing eligible children and prevent the spread of the virus, especially at the border communities.

Joint vaccinating teams exist at border states of Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Kwara, Niger, Kebbi, Sokoto, Katsina, Jigawa, Yobe, Borno, Adamawa, Benue, Cross River, and Akwa Ibom.

Ogun State flagged off its NIPDs lunch of pentavalent vaccine on Friday at Itori Health Centre, Itori in Ewekoro Local Council Area, with the hope to capture 4,679,394 under-five children across the state.

Executive Director of NPHCDA, Dr. Ado Gana Mohammed, told The Guardian yesterday that the immunisation campaign is going on as planned.