Cancer: Funds increase can save lives in SADC
Lazarus Sauti
Cancer in the Southern
African Development Community (SADC), like in other low- and medium-income
countries is worse than Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), Malaria and
Tuberculosis (TB). This means that the region is at crossroads in the face of
rising cancer cases.
“Cancer kills more
people in poor countries than AIDS, malaria and TB combined,” agrees the
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) – the specialised cancer
agency of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
In Zimbabwe, for
example, an estimated 6 000 cancer cases and approximately 1 700 deaths were
recorded in 2012, indicating a notable rise from the previous year, according
to the latest cancer registry.
Despite the fact that
cancer is preventable and can be treated when detected early, current national
cancer statistics in Namibia indicate that the number of cancer patients are
alarming. According to cancer statistics from IARC GlobalCan (2012), 1 300
people in Namibia are newly diagnosed with cancer per year and 800 people die
from the disease per year.
In South Africa, 47 000
people died of cancer in 2012, according to WHO – a specialised agency of the
United Nations that is concerned with international public health.
Further and according
IARC, low- and middle-income countries accounted for 57 per cent of the 14
million people diagnosed with cancer worldwide in 2012 – but 65 per cent of the
deaths.
Professor Tezer Kutluk, President of the Union for International Cancer
Control (UICC) – a membership based non-governmental organisation that exists
to help the global health community accelerate the fight against cancer, concurs:
“More than eight million people a year
die from cancer of which more than 60 per cent of those deaths occurred in low-
and middle-income countries, the majority in the middle-income segment.”
The region and its leaders have failed to
recognise cancer as a high priority health problem despite millions of people
succumbing to the disease, to say the words of Menzisi Thabane, private
oncologist in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province.
The
burden of cancer, unfortunately as asserted by IARC, is falling increasingly
heavily on the poor, and the rise in the number of cases of cancer is due to
ageing populations and the increasing adoption of risk behaviour such as
consumption of unhealthy diets, lack of physical exercise, harmful use of
alcohol and tobacco use.
Also,
most Southern African countries have no trained
oncologists, let alone treatment centres. According to Zimbabwe’s Ministry of
Health and Child Care, the country only has four oncologists catering to over 7
000cancer patients nationwide. “The shortage of cancer doctors stands as an
impediment to comprehensive treatment and care of cancer patients here,” said
Prosper Chonzi, director of Health Services in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital.
Lack of a proper health
financing policy along with a framework to pool resources together has also largely
contributed to the poor state of cancer treatment the health delivery system in
the region.
For instance, access to cost effective solutions such as vaccination,
regular cancer screening, and proven therapies is limited. As a result, poor
cancer sufferers are not only more likely to die, but more likely to suffer
pain and financial distress.
As most SADC countries
are in the midst of fighting cancer, there is need for the regional grouping to
increase cancer funding.
Funding is very critical,
especially considering that most SADC citizens live in rural areas where access
to cancer as well as other medical care is very limited.
On World Cancer Day 2015, leading global public health experts from UICC
also agreed that millions of lives can be saved through affordable increases in
the investment into cancer services throughout the world.
According to their analysis, increased annual international community
funding of US$18 billion globally could save three million lives per year by
2030 and many more in succeeding decades, through prevention, earlier detection
and improved care for cancer patients.
Further, their analysis showed that increased funding will also provide
pain relief to ease the deaths of millions who will die of cancer during this
period.
SADC countries, collectively with other
low-income countries, must, therefore, increase their health budgets if they
are to combat cancer.
Headline data presented at the World Cancer Congress in December 2014 from Volume
three (3) of the Diseases Control Priorities edition (DCP3) also called on
middle-income countries with the means to do so to increase spending on cancer
by 2-5 percent of their health budgets.
This, therefore, calls the
SADC grouping not only to increase cancer funding, but also simply develop
strategies to domesticate cancer funding as it is essential for member-states
to have a sustainable domestic source of funding to increase access to life
saving cancer treatment.
Countries within the
region must also drop the dependency syndrome and unlock internal resources to
fund cancer treatment initiatives.
According to the Abuja
Declaration adopted in April 2001 by African Heads of State, and under Abuja
target scenario, SADC countries need to invest more in health if the regional
bloc is to transform the lives of its citizens. This is so because investing in
health has positive impact on socio-economic transformation.
Member-states must, as
a necessity, target cancer funding as a smart investment in the socio-economic
development of their respective nations.
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