A Consultant Oncologist, Dr Kehinde Ololade, on Thursday urged the Federal Government to include cervical cancer immunisation into the National Immunisation Scheme to reduce its burden in the society.

Ololade, who works with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, made the plea in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.

According to him, inclusion of   immunisation in the National Immunisation programme will help to reduce the incidence of people coming down with cervical cancer.

“According to WHO, cervical cancer is the fourth most frequent cancer in women with an estimated 570,000 new cases in 2018.

“Approximately, 90 per cent of deaths from cervical cancer occurred in low and middle income countries.

“We know that cervical cancer comes down with a lot of mobility and pathology which make it difficult for people to further live a good life.

“It has a lot of effects on quality of life; women who live with cervical cancer cannot enjoy their sexual life and it is difficult for them to have children.

“Because as the pregnancy is increasing, the cervical cancer will be getting worse, such that most patients that have cervical cancer and got pregnant eventually died,’’ he said.

Ololade said that the programme could also be used as a catchment to help give children in contact during immunisation process proper sex education.

“This is because cervical cancer immunisation is meant to be given between the time that a child is growing from childhood to becoming a teenager.

“It will enlighten and make them aware about the dangers of various sexually transmitted diseases, which also include the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), the major cause of cervical cancer.

“The programme will ensure that these children are immunised before they can proceed to secondary school and that will serve as their final immunisation,“ he said.

The expert advised the Federal Government to collaborate with health experts to know how they could make a plan that would accommodate the cervical cancer immunisation into the national schedule.

Also, a Gynecologist, Dr Adewale Oba, said that the level of awareness on cervical cancer amongst women across the country was still very poor.

Oba, who also work in LUTH said that the awareness could be improved upon by ensuring that the primary healthcare was functional.

“At the primary healthcare level, training of health providers can be done and women coming to seek healthcare at that level can be counselled to have Pap smear.

“Cervical cancer is a scourge bedeviling our women, and it is the commonest female cancer after breast cancer with high mortality rate.

“It is one cancer that has a known cause and because of this, prevention is very easy and available, though may not be affordable to many Nigerian women because of our high level of poverty.

“But the level of awareness of this cancer amongst women is still very poor; many women when asked about their awareness of Pap smear, which is a screening test for cervical cancer, they say no.

“This is why we are calling for intensive and aggressive awareness campaign on cervical cancer in order to reduce its burden,’’ he said.

According to him, government should invest in the vaccines against cervical cancer.

“Government need to equip health facilities with state-of-the-heart equipment in order to treat women who have contacted the disease adequately.

“Many of our health facilities cannot give care to cancer patients.

“Also, training of health personnel is another important thing that should receive attention,“ he said. (NAN)
AOI/OKG/GOK

-NAN

BE

– Jan. 31, 2019 @ 16:19 GMT |