Blaise Ackom, the secretary of the Cancer Support Network Foundation, has appealed to the government to absorb the cost of cervical cancer screening in order to encourage women to screen themselves.
Cervical cancer is cancer that starts in the cells of the cervix, and it usually develops slowly over time before the cancer appears in the cervix for the cells of the cervix to go through dysplasia changes, in which abnormal cells begin to appear in the cervical tissue.
According to him, cervical cancer is the second leading cause of death among women in the country, apart from breast cancer, which underscores the need for pragmatic measures to be in place to tackle the canker.
Speaking in an interview with Max Morning Agenda in Accra on Tuesday, Ackom said the government could foot the cost of screening through the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
He noted that early detection of the cancer was no longer key to saving lives, explaining that “doctors have been detecting the cancer early, but the lack of funds for the screening has been the major reason for the rise in the death toll.”
Currently, the statistics revealed by the Ghana Health Service show that 1,699 women die from the ailment annually, and about 2,797 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer in Ghana.
Ackom went on to say that no regular physician or medical facility could detect the human papillomavirus (HPV) and that the government urgently needed to train more “health practitioners across the 16 regions to take up the task of screening and detecting the cancer in the cervix.”
Per the World Health Organization’s (WHO) target for 2030, girls aged nine to 15 should be vaccinated against cervical cancer; however, the vaccination was being sold in Ghana while other countries were vaccinating the girls for free.
That, he noted, was not encouraging the girls to get vaccinated, and he charged the government to take that bold step just like it took with COVID-19 to get female youth vaccinated for free.
Source: Ghana/MaxTV/MaxFM/max.com.gh/Joyceline Natally Cudjoe
