Dr. Nneka Nwaobi, is a woman that is compassionate about the plight of Nigerian children living with cancer. As a medical practitioner with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH ), her encounter with parents of children living with cancer who were unable to offset their hospital bills motivated her to set up an organisation known as Children Living With Cancer (CLWCF).
Since the inception of , CLWCF some years ago, the organisation with the aid of some kind hearted Nigerians is saddled with providing oncology drugs to children with cancer including chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
It also, facilitates oversees treatment for cancer kids desiring such.
Speaking in a recent interview, Mrs. Nwaobi stressed the need for more awareness creation on the reality of children cancer and the challenges their parents go through .
She added that children cancer is on the increase, stating that the society can help ameliorate the plight of children affected by cancer by giving financial assistance to their parents as most of them are detained in the hospital with their children due to their inability to offset hospital bills.
According to her, Nigeria has not scratched the surface of childhood cancer awareness.
In her words: “Many people still don’t know that kids have cancer.”
She regretted that there is a little political will to face childhood cancer in the country. “Unfortunately, Nigeria is not child-friendly. There is international cancer week. We have attended a few of them. And while we were there, all that was being talked about was breast cancer, prostate cancer; colon cancer and a host of others. Nobody is talking about childhood cancer, which include; cancer of the eye, bone, among others. “And I have had course to ask, why are we not talking about childhood cancers?
“It is something that is in our face, something that is there. And perhaps, I should say self-imposed stigma because some people will not come out to say their kids have cancer. They will hide it from family members and friends, so that nobody gets to know.
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“And it’s neither a curse nor contagious. So, I don’t know the reason stigma should be attached to childhood cancers by affected families themselves,” she noted.
Describing ignorance as another huge challenge, she said that most parents whose children are living with cancer are not knowledgeable about the ailment and added that healthcare givers are not doing enough in that area.
Buttressing her point, she said: “There was a mother whose child has cancer of the eye (Retno Blastoma). She had the eye taken out. After the chemotherapy, they went home. No follow up. Later she came back because the other eye was affected and if she had been coming to the hospital with the child, the other eye may not have been affected.
“Then, of course, the side effect of the drugs is not very nice. When most parents see the way their children react to those drugs, when they get home, they don’t come back. So, we need to educate them and let them know that the drug effect is for a while. Even the hair falling off grows back. I have pictures of children who lost their hairs while taking the chemotherapy drugs. But, two, three months afterwards, they have lovely hair again,” Nwaobi said.
However, she advocated for more not-for-profit organizations to be involved in the campaign.
She said: “We don’t have enough counselors. The idea of going to see a Psychologist is alien in Nigeria. For most Nigerians, It’s only people who are insane that are expected to visit Psychologists.
“Meanwhile, all of us need to be counseled at one time or the other,” the Medical doctor said.
Some other things like having the drugs when they are needed, having blood when it’s needed, having platelets when it’s needed, she said are things that will help ameliorate the plights of children living with cancer.
To her, the Pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria are not doing all they should do. “In India, they manufacture the drugs right there. And because it is manufactured in India, it is less expensive than drugs that are imported into India. Even when we get medicines from there, it is cheaper than the ones from America. So, for us, it’s something that pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria should look at.
“So, we’re appealing to Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria to try and get the license to start producing drugs in Nigeria. When India got the license to start producing drugs in their country, it brought them much joy and reduced the cost of importing drugs from other countries of the world,” she noted.
