Wasiu Adeyemo, LUTH’s chief medical director, says the NSIA-LUTH Cancer Centre (NLCC) has treated more than 10,000 patients since its inception in 2019.

Mr Adeyemo said this in Lagos on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the centre’s fifth anniversary anniversary.

Mr Adeyemo said before the period, a large number of patients could not access care for cancer because the machines were not working across the country.

He said the centre was a private partnership plan facility, which was a working model.

Mr Adeyemo said that because of the centre’s successes, the present administration made a budget for five additional sites across the country.

The LUTH chief said the centre was delighted to celebrate its successes and achievements and that, using the right models, things were possible in Nigeria.

Earlier, speaking at the anniversary, Abayomi Durosimi-Etti, the chief clinical oncologist, said that NLCC was currently the best cancer centre in West Africa.

Mr Durosimi-Etti said that survival was a factor of how early one presented at the centre, adding that if detected early, with modern machines, NLCC could boast of the possibility of curing that cancer.

He said the challenges facing patient treatment included a staff shortage and the cost of care, adding that the escalating cost of care was not only in Nigeria.

He, however, appealed for a functional National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to take care of real cancer indigent patients.

Also, Tolulope Adewole, chairman of the board of the NSIA-LUTH cancer centre, said that NLCC interacted with 500,000 patients out of the 10,000 it had treated.

Adewole said they were elated because there was only one linear accelerator in the country before they embarked on the journey.

A medical linear accelerator (LINAC) is the device most commonly used for external beam radiation treatments for cancer patients. It delivers high-energy X-rays or electrons to the region of the patient’s tumour.

Mr Adewole said that the story had always been that it could not be done and that Nigerians could not run linear accelerators because of the technicalities of the machine.

“This statement has been proven not to be correct since we have shown that there are endless possibilities in Nigeria,’’ he said. 

(NAN)