The Chairman, Board of Trustees, Cancer Enlightenment and Support Foundation, Mr Adegboyega Adepitan, has urged the federal and state governments to provide free diagnostics for cancer patients. Adepitan said this in Lagos on Friday when the foundation paid the medical bill of a cancer patient, Mrs Gloria Eze, who had been receiving treatment at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja. He also lamented that the National Health Insurance Scheme and the Lagos State HealthInsurance Scheme did not cover cancer treatment. “The ideal thing is that the government should provide free diagnostics for cancer patients because the cost of diagnostics alone is one of the reasons people don’t go for checkups in Nigeria. Health insurance should also cover cancer treatment.
“There is also the need for the government and the private sector to collaborate to fund the procurement of radiotherapy equipment. The ones we have in Nigeria cannot take care of 10 per cent of cancer patients. Being diagnosed with cancer is not a death sentence,” Adepitan said.
Adepitan said the foundation decided to pay the medical bill of the cancer patient because the government alone could not fund the health sector. The beneficiary, Eze, said she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2015. She thanked the foundation for coming to her aid.
