•As ROFWOL marks 22 years of touching lives of the underprivileged

By Sola Ogundipe

The Federal government has been charged to prioritse efforts in eradicating cervical cancer in Nigeria by actively promoting public awareness about screening and prevention among Nigerian women.

Experts who made the call in Lagos called on the government to subsidise the cost of screening and treatment in all public hospitals, saying that intensified public enlightenment would encourage early detection.

Speaking at an event entitled: “Rock Foundation for Widows, Orphans and Less Privileged, ROFWOL, Celebrating 22 Years of Touching Lives and Fundraising for Five Years Project,” a consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, Healthwize Consult, Lagos, Dr  Olufunmilola Mojoyinola, regretted that women are not taking advantage of available provisions in public hospitals for screening.

Her words: “To void cervical cancer, the first thing a woman should do is to go for screening because it is the screening that will detect if a woman has cancer because it does not give symptoms in the early stages until it is about to be diagnosed.

“So, every woman once  sexually active must screen for cervical cancer. It can be every three years, using a Pap smear or using HPV, which is every five years. That is essential. Then, of course, promiscuity should be avoided, but the woman cannot be the only one avoiding being promiscuous because she cannot guarantee what her husband is doing. So, on her part, she should keep to her husband and at the same time screen herself.

“A man with HPV may not show any symptom that he has any HPV but he may have a little growth on the penis but that does not come through for every man.”

She said the transmission of the virus to the woman is what causes the cancer.

“When a woman does not screen to check that she has the virus, if she ignores screening for eight to ten years she can develop it. When we say it is manageable it means that the woman has screened and she has been seen to have probably have the precancerous stages that is sign one, two, and three. It is when this woman actually screens herself and she may be in stage 1 or stage 2.

“She can be treated and that treatment is permanent because it gives her a cancer-free life. It does not make her get to the late stage of cancer, but mind you, anybody who has that test done and has been treated still needs to keep checking herself continually for every three years or five years. As long as the girl or the lady is sexually active, ideally,  it used to be from ages 21 to 65 but now we have ages 17 to 18, but once a lady is exposed to a man, she should start screening.”

On her part, the Convener of ROFWOL, Mrs Chika- Okafor, a medical engineer, said the huge cost of carrying out a test was inhibiting. She urged the government to subsidise the cost and make it free in all government hospitals.

“The government can do a lot of things, we have a lot of federal hospitals, it can reduce cost of the test. It is very expensive and not good. They can subsidise the cost and make it free in all government hospitals. There could be a cervical cancer subsidy. The big companies in Nigeria can also put their funds into it. They can take care of the cost as part of their corporate social responsibility so that people can simply walk into any hospital and get tested, just like calling for the promotion of poliomyelitis in children.”

 Urging Nigeria to kick out cervical cancer,  just like what the World Health Organisation  Chika-Okafor, who has charted the course of widows, orphans, and the less privileged for 22 years, said corporate organisations in the country should be involved in the advocacy by investing in it.  The Chairman of the event, Dr.  Geoff Ohen, commended the Chika-Okafor family for their philanthropic gesture, even as he noted that all hands should be on deck to assist the Foundation iin achieving its goal of kicking out cervical cancer.