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Nigerians living with cancer and those taking care of them all have sad stories to tell about surviving the disease in Nigeria. Though cancer is a deadly disease, many are dying from it in the country basically because of inadequate medical care occasioned by lack of resources to seek appropriate treatment.
Unfortunately, the cost of cancer diagnosis and treatment, whether in adult or children, is usually high and often out of the reach of the poor, especially in low income countries such as Nigeria. Consequently, surviving cancer in Nigeria becomes difficult as many cancer patients, both young and old, are losing their lives to the ailment because of lack of money to access quality care .
For those who could barely afford the treatment, there is also the problem of lack of standard diagnostic and treatment facilities in place to handle their cases. No wonder Nigeria has the highest cancer death rate in Africa, according to the Founder of Breast Without Spot, Prof. Ifeoma Okoye. Besides, payment for healthcare in Nigeria is still out-of-pocket, which is further fueling cancer deaths, both in adult and children.
THIS IS OUR STORY
The story of Mrs Modupe Janet Oyedele, who lost her only child, Timilehin, to leukaemia–blood cancer, shows that many children living with the disease in Nigeria would certainly succumb to death if no adequate financial support was provided for them to access quality care as their parents obviously would not be able to shoulder the responsibility.
Sharing her experience with The Point, she said, “With what I went through with my son, I can say it anywhere that children from poor homes cannot survive leukaemia in Nigeria. No son or daughter of a poor man with N30,000 minimum wage will survive cancer. Chemotherapy alone is between N400,000 and N500,000. The amount you spend treating children living with leukaemia cannot be quantified. They constantly require blood transfusion apart from chemotherapy. I was always donating blood and getting platelets to Timilehin because he needed to take a lot of them. Timilehin, while he was alive, was always transfused and a pint of blood cost between N15,000 and N20,000. Leukaemia patients regularly experience shortage of blood. So, there is always an urgent need for blood transfusion. Some times, my son may require up to three pints of blood per day. Not that the blood will cure them but it will actually sustain them from pain.”
CHEMOTHERAPY
Modupe, who is a staff of the National Union of Textile Garment Tailoring Workers of Nigeria, said the financial implication of constant blood transfusion was a big challenge for her family.
“My husband and I prayed and I donated blood for Timilehin more than 10 times while taking care of him in the hospital. At a point, the doctor will get medical students to donate for him. I cannot tell you this is the number of pints of blood or platelets he took. Sometimes in a day, he took up to four platelets at the cost of N10, 000 each. And the following day, they will tell me “my child is short of blood again.”
Modupe stated further, “Sustaining his regular blood transfusion and other blood products required to relief him of pain became difficult for us. This is for blood transfusion, which is one aspect of the treatment. Now come to chemotherapy, which is a major cancer treatment, the amount is scary. How many people can afford N500,0000 to N2 million for chemotherapy alone? As if that was not enough, sometimes when we visited the hospital, we were told there was no bed space. I could remember one of my experiences at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja. They told us that there was no bed space and referred us to Yaba. You can imagine what we went through; yet we lost him,” she said.
According to Modupe, apart from the shortage of bed space, a lot of children with cancer were turned down at the hospital apparently because of lack of money for treatment.
The World Cancer Report 2014 shows that the disease is now the world’s biggest killer.
According to the World Health Organisation, cancer accounts for 13 per cent of all deaths registered globally and 70 per cent of the figure occurs in middle and low income countries.
Narrating her ugly experience to our correspondent, another mother, Mrs Chidimma Okpala, who is still mourning the death of her nine-year old son, Chibueze, who died of leukaemia in 2018, said she went through a painful journey to make her son live, yet he died in her hands, owing to her inability to purchase an injection of N500,000.
She said , “I don’t want to remember what I went through. After all my labour and sacrifice, my little savings and earnings could not save my son’s life from cancer. Any time I remember how my son died in my arms because we couldn’t afford N500,000 injection needed to keep him alive, I break down in tears. Imagine watching your child writhing in pain and begging to live, yet you can’t save him because of money! Where on earth will I get that kind of money with my little business and nobody nor government to help? Cancer is wicked. ”
Narrating her painful experience further, she said, “I exhausted all I had, after which I went begging for money. Still, we were unable to raise the money for his treatment and he died. Now, before the issue of N500,000 injection came up, he was on chemotherapy treatment of N77,000 per week. I had already spent all the money I had moving him from one hospital to another for chemotherapy. I went to my church for assistance and they gave me N400, 000 to run the chemotherapy. I needed to run the chemotherapy for 10 months. It was after the chemotherapy that the issue of injection of half a million came up. I went everywhere crying and begging for help but help never came and he died. You can imagine what parents of children with cancer are going through in Nigeria.”
Experts say cancer patients with no access to chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgery constitute the bulk of those who eventually die of the disease.
Confirming the plight of the two women, a renowned oncologist with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Prof. Remi Ajekigbe, said emphatically that the poor could not survive cancer in Nigeria.
“Even the rich do not always survive it. The reason is simple. Either the facilities are unavailable or where available, it is extremely expensive,” he said.
On what should be done to reduce the number of children dying of cancer in Nigeria, a Clinical Radiation Oncologist at LUTH, Dr Adebayo Joseph, called on the government to invest in cancer care, saying government should not leave the treatment in the hands of parents alone.
She also wants the government to implement policies, especially the health insurance scheme, in order to cover the cost of treatment for children living with cancer, stressing that the treatment is expensive, costing about N2 million.
Calling on well-to-do Nigerians and corporate organisations to support children living with cancer, Joseph revealed that children have higher chances of survival than adults when detected early, urging parents, especially mothers, to always take their children to the hospital whenever they are ill for proper medical check.
15 OUT OF EVERY 20 PATIENTS HAVE LEUKAEMIA
Also speaking, an Oncology Nurse at the teaching hospital, Oluwatoyin Awosemo, told our correspondent that leukaemia is a form of cancer that affects the blood in individual and very common with people between the ages of zero-14 years.
“Leukemia is common among Nigerian children. When you admit about 20 patients, 15 will be leukaemia while the other five are suffering from other types of cancer, like kidney cancer. It can present in form of bleeding from the nose or ear, blood in the urine or faeces, fever or malaria,”
she said.
Despite losing her son to the deadly disease, Modupe, on her part, is making frantic efforts to ensure that children living with leukaemia in Nigeria do not die. This, she is doing, through the establishment of Timilehin Leukaemia Foundation, which is currently involved in free blood donations to affected
children.
She urged the Federal Government to find a lasting solution to leukaemia and also subsidise its treatment by providing free blood, drugs and other consumables needed for treatment.
