National Cancer Treatment Center to Fully Scale Up Operations by January

National Cancer Treatment Center to Fully Scale Up Operations in January

The Minister, Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, has said that the Radiotherapy Centre, of the National Hospital, Abuja would commence treatment to the general public come January, 2019.

The Minister made this known while inspecting the Cancer centre extension and newly installed second cancer equipment which was donated by SNEPCO Nigeria limited, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), as part of her social responsibility to Nigerians.

The new equipment which is worth more than One million Dollars has the capacity to treat at least a hundred patients a day, putting the total number of patients that could be treated at the centre at two-hundred (200) when the two machines at the centre are fully in use.

The installation of this second equipment, according to the Minister, made the Centre the only Cancer hospital to run two of such Cancer machines in Africa. With this feat achieved and the treatment to be given comparable to what was given anywhere in the world, the Minister was optimistic that no Nigerian would go abroad for Cancer treatment except by choice not a necessity.

He also said that the Centre would also receive a PEI/CT machine (an imaging device for cancer diagnosis and treatment) adding that the cost of treatment at the hospital would depend on the type of Cancer but government would keep revising it to make it affordable.

Professor Adewole said it had been the dream of the Federal government to put in place a world class centre and make it as a for-runner to other countries adding that Federal government was determined to build one of such centre at each of the six geopolitical zones of the country apart from the Nine other Cancer centres across the country.

Speaking on the preparedness of the hospital for the expected influx of patients already thronging the Centre, the Chief Medical Director (CMD), National Hospital, Dr. Jaff Momoh, said that the Centre was equipped with high calibre of medical personnel trained on cancer treatment and management.