Africa-Press – Eswatini. Over E30 million has been injected by Taiwan to the Eswatini Cancer project so as to help the country fight against cancer.
Eswatini Cancer Project is a four-year milestone aimed at strengthening the Eswatini Cancer Control Unit (ENCCU).
The project among other things helps to address the strengthening early diagnosis, care and treatment of cancer. Government collaborated with Wanfang Hospital (Managed by Taipei Medical University) from Taiwan through the ENCCU.
Taiwan Medical Mission – Cancer Project Cytologist Chloé Lin said their country injected over E6 million per year donation to the project so as to help cancer patients in Eswatini.
She said the project was initiated following studies done which showed some gaps in relation to the comprehensive cancer care in the country.
ENCCU developed strategic interventions for the identified gaps and collaboratively implemented an awareness programme to promote the uptake of the cancer services from the prevention to survivorship. Lin said the kingdom had struggled for the last two decades from an overwhelming HIV epidemic.
“As it is finally experiencing a control of this epidemic, a rising incidence of cancer cases is threatening to destabilise the health system which is in a recovery phase and is still fragile.
analysis
A recent analysis of the available data shows that 4 859 new cancer cases were captured in the cancer registry between 2016 -2020 and the majority were in stage four (3 384, 60.1 per cent), followed by not staged cases (1 069, 19.1 per cent) while the rest were stage three – (543, 9.6 per cent), stage two – (372, 6.6 per cent) and lastly stage one (269, 4.8 per cent) making treatment and care less effective.”
She said such a delay in accessing cancer care or late presentation resulted in preventable death. Due to this fact, the burden of cancers was arguably under-estimated. Lin said cancer was now recognised globally as one of the leading non-communicable diseases responsible for 9.6 million deaths in 2018 and this figure is projected to rise unless the problem is addressed urgently.
She clarified that ENCCU was a response by the ministry of health and stakeholders to prioritise cancer prevention and control in Eswatini. It recognised that the disease could not be eradicated, but that its impact can be significantly reduced if effective measures were put in place to control risk factors, detect cases early and offer comprehensive and quality care to those with the disease.
“ENCCU draws from lessons learnt, best practices and experiences from -countries with similar contexts and is aligned to the national health policy and the ministry of health’s vision and mission.
“The central pillar of the project is to strengthen the ENCCU through capacity building of the health care providers with knowledge and skills on comprehensive cancer care, to establish high care oncology clinic to cater for all cancers.
“The project will also help establish an electronic referral system including a database for cancer and referrals through the Phalala Fund office and finally enhance early diagnosis of cancers and initiation of palliative care serviced delivery and survivorship support for patients.”
ENCCU further focused on ensuring there was coordination of all cancer programmes among stakeholders at all levels.
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