Support cancer prevention, control in Africa —First Lady

The First Lady, Mrs Lordina Mahama, has called on fellow first ladies in Africa to lead a planned and sustained campaign and work with related organisations and agencies to support cancer prevention and control in Africa.

Addressing the Stop Cervical, Breast and Prostate Cancer in Africa (SCCA) conference in Nairobi, Kenya on Tuesday, she said currently, approximately 2,900 Ghanaians were diagnosed with breast cancer every year.

The conference, which was on the theme; “Investing to Save Lives, the Role of Public Private Sector Partnerships,” attracted first ladies, representatives from related organisations, parliamentarians, ministers of health, health professionals and scientists.

She also said the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that 6.7 million women aged above 15 were at risk of developing cervical and breast cancers in Ghana, indicating that predictions were that by the end of this year, there would be over 5,000 new cases of cervical cancer in Ghana, with the possibility of about 3,300 deaths.

She, however, said the government was particularly strengthening public health surveillance and data quality to inform national efforts to control and prevent cancer.

Cancer deaths

“We are all aware that as many as 85 per cent of the world’s cervical cancer deaths occur in developing countries and as first ladies, we have been working to support our governments to tackle this and other challenges and the results are showing,” she said.

She asserted that although governments were committing lots of funds to health projects, budgetary constraints continued to hamper the full realisation of these efforts.

To this end, Mrs Mahama said, there was the need to promote more collaborations with non-governmental organisations as the role of the public/private sector partnerships in quality healthcare delivery could not be overemphasised.

Major contributors

Mrs Mahama said women remained the major contributors to the development of the world’s economies and issues of their health must, therefore, be a source of concern to all governments.

She indicated that ensuring early detection, providing proper treatment, strengthening multi-sectoral collaboration to improve public health awareness would, among others, help in scaling up services, and pointed out that with the implementation of the ‘National Strategy for Cancer Control in Ghana’, the government was working to reduce mortality rate of cancer by 30 per cent, through primary prevention, effective screening and early detection.

Mrs Mahama told the over 4,000 delegates attending the conference from all over the world that across the continent, just like Ghana, various actions were being implemented, but more action was needed “if we are to reduce, if not eliminate, death from these cancers in the shortest possible time”.

National strategy

She said through the efforts of the GAVI Alliance for example, a number of vulnerable girls in Ghana had been immunised against cervical cancer.

She said her organisation, the Lordina Foundation, working under the umbrella of the Organisation of African First Ladies Against HIV and AIDS (OAFLA), was effectively partnering with the UT Cares Foundation to raise awareness of breast cancer through what is dubbed as ‘the Pledge Pink Campaign’.

The First Lady of Kenya, Mrs Margeret Kenyatta, said the first step in combating cancer was for people to go back to traditional foodstuff and limit the consumption of highly processed foods, expecially among the youth.

“We must lobby among leaders, private sector and NGOs to join the battle against cancer by ensuring our people live healthy lives,” she said.

She said the war against cancer needed a multi-sectoral approach among African leaders, governments, the private sector and non-governmental organisations.