Dr. Ukoma Chikadibia, the Chairman and Founder, Leukemia Care Plus Initiative, has appealed to the Federal Government to build diagnostic centres for the screening of cancer of the blood.
Chikadibia made the appeal in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) at Keffi Federal Medical Centre, Nasarawa State, on Thursday.
He said the centre should be built in the six geo-political zones of the country, similar to the one in Lagos.
Chikadibia said the government could do that by bringing state of the art equipment that could make diagnosis and early detection easier.
“We cannot carry out tests for cancer by using microscope. In advanced world, there are easier ways to diagnose cancer,’’ he said.
He advised the Federal Government to also encourage those who were in the field and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) that were working hard to create awareness.
“Government should support them to go to the hinterlands and support the people who are working toward the goal of stamping out the menace,’’ Chikadibia said.
He described cancer of the blood as the most complicated to detect as its cells would be multiplying inside the bone marrow without any outgrowth.
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Chikadibia sensitised patients to be proactive by carrying out tests when they keep treating malaria every other month.
“If you keep having fever often, go and see your dermatologist to do your full blood count and let them check your white cell count. If it is too high, they refer you to a dermatologist,’’ he said.
Chikadibia, who is also a dermatologist at the Federal Medical Centre Keffi, said blood cancer is malignant, multiplying in a manner that it affects other blood cells.
“It is a situation whereby any cell in the body can transform and become malignant and it begins to grow out of proportion.
“Cancer means cells that keep growing abnormally and are not dying; thus becoming immortal and so every cell in the body can be affected,’’ he said.
He, however, said that unlike in other cells, like in the breast, where the growing tissue could be noticed through swelling, in the case of blood cancer, there are no outgrowths.
“The only way we can know a patient has blood cancer is after running some tests, through questions and some investigations like bone marrow aspiration and blood count,’’ Chikadibia said.
He said the abnormal cells could be identified either in the bone marrow or in the blood.
According to him, one of the signs is that the patient would be feeling ill especially severe anemia.
“Blood is produced in the bone marrow so within the bone marrow if a particular cell is multiplying, it will now suppress the production of the other cells in the blood.
“For instance if it is the white cell which is Leukemia that is multiplying in excess, it will suppress the red blood cells so the person will be weighed down by anemia; weakness and shortage of blood,’’ he said.
Chikadibia said if the platelet component which helped blood to clot was suppressed, the person would start bleeding from the mouth, from the gum, from the nose, from the urine and other parts of the body.
“If the person has injury it cannot heal.
“The blood cancer that is noticed growing in the neck which is when squamous cell cancer spreads to lymph in the neck or around the collarbone.
“Those are the ones you can easily notice but the other ones within the blood cannot easily be identified because blood is liquid.
“Unless a person is overwhelmed with the symptoms such as bleeding and tiredness.
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“In our enviroment, blood cancer is common because people don’t know when they have the disease as they keep treating malaria and typhoid.
“It is only when the patient visits a hospital and we do his blood count and realise white cell is too much and we do further investigation.
“There are different types of blood cancer as there are different cells in the blood and each of them can grow,” he said.
Chikadibia said there were some that could be cured and there were some that could not be cured but could only be managed through chemotherapy to kill off the cancer cells and make them lower.
According to him, most cancers are not curable because if one cancer cell remains in the body, overnight it can multiply in a hundred fold and that is why most times, the patients remain on medication.
He said the cure could be achieved through bone marrow transplant or stem cell transplant which was not available here in Nigeria at the moment.
He said patients who could afford it had to seek treatment outside the country.
Chikadibia said early detection and diagnosis was important as that was the only way the patient could live long.
He noted that in Nigeria, they treated blood cancer cases with chemotherapy.
Chikadibia said medical practitioners used the combination of drugs to remove those cancer cells.
He, however, observed that the negative aspect was that as the drugs were killing the cells, they also affected other tissues of the body.
Chikadibia said in Nigeria, doctors could deal with that but the person had to be on maintenance drug to keep the cancer cells from growing again. (NAN)
