The Chief Medical Director, CMD, Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, Prof Wasiu Adeyemo has disclosed that no fewer than 10,000 patients have been treated at the NSIA-LUTH Cancer Centre since its inception in 2019.
Adeyemo stated this in Lagos on the sidelines of the centre’s fifth year anniversary on Wednesday.
The CMD said that prior to the period, a large number of patients could not access care for cancer because the machines were not working across the country.
He said the centre was a Public Private Partnership facility which was a model that was working.
Adeyemo noted that because of the successes the centre had recorded, the present administration made budget for it, with additional five sites to be sited across the country.
He said that the centre was delighted to celebrate its successes, what it had achieved and that things were possible in Nigeria using the right models.
Prof. Abayomi Durosimi-Etti, Chief Clinical Oncologist, said at the moment, the centre is the best cancer centre in West Africa.
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Durosimi-Etti said that survival was a factor of how early one presented at the centre, adding that if detected early, with modern machines, the centre could boast of possibility of curing all cancer.
He said the challenge facing treatment of patients included shortage of staff and cost of care, adding that the escalating cost of care was not only in Nigeria.
He appealed for a functional National Health Insurance Scheme to take care of real cancer indigent patients.
Dr Tolulope Adewole, Chairman, Board of NSIA-LUTH cancer centre, said that the centre had interactions with 500,000 patients of the 10,000 it had treated.
Adewole said that they were elated because before they embarked on the journey, there was only one linear accelerator in the country.
A medical linear accelerator, LINAC, is the device most commonly used for external beam radiation treatments for patients with cancer. It delivers high energy x-rays or electrons to the region of the patient’s tumor.
Adewole said that the story had always been that it could not be done, that Nigerians could not run linear accelerator because of its technicalities of the machine.
“This statement has been proven not to be correct, since we have shown that there are endless possibilities in Nigeria,’’ he said.
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