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”.
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.
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