‘Ignorance, Poverty Fuelling Breast Cancer Prevalence’

A university don, Professor Oladipo Campbell has said that the poor knowledge and poverty of Nigerian women about the prevention and management of breast cancer is responsible for high level of prevalence of the disease in the country.
Campbell who presented a paper titled: ‘Breast Cancer Survival Strategies,’ as part of the activities marking the 2014 Radiology Faculty Day at the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria, in Lagos recently, noted that Nigerian women are poorly informed about the killer breast cancer disease.
He said in 2008, there was a 23 per cent increase in breast cancer case, with 14 per cent deaths, noting that only five per cent of Nigerian women opted for mammography. He added that an Ibadan-based cancer awareness group had indicated that in the past few years, there has been fivefold increase in the country.
According to him, from the age of 20 to 39 years, an average woman is expected to do self-breast examination (SBE), while from age 40 to 59, they are expected to go a little further by applying clinical breast examination (CBE), while from age 60 and above, women are expected to go for mammography, stressing that there are powerful equipment such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which can detect lumps at its best.

He attributed the cause of high prevalence of breast cancer to poverty and ignorance, stressing that most Nigerian women would not present their cases to health care institutions until the cases reach stages three and four, during which it might have been too late to redeem the condition.
The President of the National Postgraduate Medical College, Professor Rasheed Arogundade had earlier expressed concern over the poor funding of the college whose main function is to produce adequate number of competent medical and dental specialists among others for the country.

According to him, due to lack of funds, the college cannot stock its library, which ought to be the best reference library in the country for Resident Doctors and Consultants. He further said the college’s pathological museum is yet to be fully developed.
He said due to lack of funds, the laudable programme of overseas clinical attachment designed to give successful part 1 candidates exposure to facilities and practice in more advanced countries has now become epileptic in its implementation, as he revealed that the college is currently using a rented property as its liaison office in Abuja because it lacks essential funding to acquire land to erect property deserving of its status.