A Professor of Pharmacology and also Head of
Department of Pharmacology of Benson Carson
School of Medicine, Babcock University, Ilisan
Remo, Ogun State, Professor Oladapo Walker, on
Tuesday, revealed that not less than 100, 000
Nigerian women die annually from the dreaded
cervical cancer disease.
Professor Walker, who is also a consultant Clinical
Pharmacology and therapeutic said the disease
spread due to the poverty of ideas and mind of the victims.
The Professor who spoke at the annual Resident
Doctors week of Babcock University, held at the
Institutions main campus, said the assistance
from government and well-meaning Nigerians can
save the situation.
His words: “I can tell you for sure that every year,
more about a 100,000 women in Nigeria have died
of cervical cancer. Globally about a million women
have the disease.
With the population of Nigeria, saying that about
hundred thousand women have the disease is a
gross under-estimation”.
He said, “The problem with cervical cancer, like
you have heard is that the latent period is very
long, it start with a chronic infection of a virus,
the Human Papilloma Virus, type 16 or type 18,
which are the casilogenic ones.
“After about 20 years when the symptoms start,
bleeding, foul smelling of the virginal discharge,
but by the time the symptoms start, it will be too
late.
“That is why we say people should go for
screening so as to ensure early detection. Once
they notice that there is activities in the cervix
then they just do a cone biotic to remove that
part that is active and believe me, it is a cure. So
it is a disease that is easily cured when women do
it, they should do it at least once in five years,
once in five years after the age of 21 years.
“They can also do it in between when they go to
baby clinics, they can also do it any time they go
for a checkup. It is so important that it has to be
part of a routine medical checkup.”
But for the check to be routine, Professor Walker
said, “we need government policy for it. This is
because the women are the pillar of our society,
women work very hard, they are the ones who
harvest after men have planted. A lot of them are
selling in the market and a lot of them are
bringing in very good money, can you imagine
what will happen to a family if the woman has
cervical cancer.
“You will see why investing in the health of
women is so important. We must also have a
policy whereby we can take care of women with
cancer, not only cervical cancer, breast cancer for
instance, it is easily detected by the individual
herself, and once the noddle is detected they go
to the hospital to remove the lump most of the
time, and that is it.
“But when the lump now has to grow and it starts
to spread, it is just too late, so my conclusion is
very simple, we must institute screening, we
need government policies, we need to do it in a
cost effective way and everybody must be
involved, market women, politician, academics
and important people in the society, we must
bring everybody to take care of the women”.
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