A group of Cancer experts from the Johns Hopkins Medicine in the United States of America have hinted that cancer related deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa can hit one million by 2030.
Experts fear deaths of the disease could even exceed the project figure in the next eight years.
Report attributed the cause of soaring cases of cancers and cancer related deaths on the continent to the lack of sufficient specialist cancer treatment centres.
The report also cited late diagnosis and treatment on the part of many patients as another factor.
Dr. Wilfred Ngwa, Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins Medicine said cancer can be treated if detected early.
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He regrets that many patients turn in only when their cases have advanced due to lack of specialist cancer centres in most countries in the sub-region.
The Professor of Radiation and Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences and his team described the finding as “cancer emergency in Africa”.
“Why we call it a cancer emergency in Africa is because if hundred people have cancer in Africa, 80% of those people would die.
They don’t have access to the same kind of treatment and infrastructure that is common in countries like the United States and Europe”, Dr. Ngwa noted.
The lead author of the Lancet Oncology report listed prostate, esophageal and colorectal as the most common cancer among men.
He said women on the other hand are mostly diagnosed with breast, cervical and esophageal cancers .
Experts identified poverty and high costs treatment of the disease as contributing factor to the high mortality rate.
Dr. Wilfred Ngwa observed that many deaths on the continent are not recorded under cancer since many societies do not have a specific name for the disease.
“Africa has over 2000 dialects. In some of these dialects, people don’t have a particular word for cancer. I grew up in in a village like that. There we call it witchcraft or some other thing”. I mean you can’t treat something if you don’t have a name for it” he stressed.
The Lancet Oncology medical journal engaged cancer specialists to investigate the rising numbers of cancers and their related deaths in 54 African countries.
