West Africa Gets Innovative Cancer Care Facility

In a bid to ease access to the management and treatment of cancer in the West African subregion, a group of Swedish and Ghanaian investors has established and run a world class innovative cancer care facility in Accra, Ghana.

The facility known as the Sweden-Ghana Medical Centre (SGMC) has come in time to help solve the regions need for private oncology services. Speaking on this initiative, Joshua Tetteh, CEO of SGMC said, “to run an infrastructure like cancer centre, you need 24 hours power supply, an enabling environment, the atomic energy permission and other support structures because cancer treatment requires a lot of efforts and logistics”.

Statistics show that most cancer patients from Nigeria and other countries in the region go toIndia, Egypt and Turkey.

A minumum of 500 to 1,000 patients leave for India every month and that translates  to about $2 million every month just to India.

“SGMC is well equipped with a modern 3-D planning system. Our cancer care involves Linear Accelerator, medical oncology with out-patient chemotherapy suite and diagnostic services. We have medical experts from Nigeria, Ghana, Sweden, Britain and Australia. ” said Tetteh.

The strategic location of Accra ensures easy access to SGMC. It to is about an hour from Lagos by air to Accra and there is no visa restriction. Investigations have also revealed that the facility pricing is very competitive compared to others in order parts of the world.

Dr. Clement Edusa, medical oncologist SGMC revealed that in the last two years they have handled over 1,004 patients most of which are palliative cases. “We get a lot of late cases which cannot be cured but just managed to reduce the pain. 7 out of 10 are late. We need early cases which can be cured.”

Edusa called for increase awareness and early diagnosis in order to detect the cancerous cells quickly. He also revealed that SGMC patients outside Ghana are mostly from Burkina Faso, Togo, Sierra leone and Nigeria.

“In order to reduce cost of treatment, the governments of Burkin Faso and Togo have reached an agreement with us to support their citizens using our facility. We also run a micro-insurance programme that enables the 185,000 members of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) send any of their members plus one family member or relative with such ailment for free treatment”. Available records showed that about 95 of the teachers have benefited from the scheme in the past nine months.

How the scheme works
GNAT pays Sweden-Ghana Cancer Foundation a lump of about $34,000 every month for the first one year to cover all members, while each member pays about 34 cents every month. Though treatment is totally free from all types of cancer diagnosis are to be paid for by individuals at a highly discounted rate.

Jens Engelson, SGMC medical director/consultant in Radiation Oncology says, “Nigerians can train at our facility by writing through the medical instituitions where they work”.

Engelson beleives that apart from our life style which has changed in the last few years, one of the major upsurge in cancer diseases is increased awareness which has also made more people to be diagnosed of cancer. He also faulted most of the statistics been bandied around as been inacurate.

“Most of these cases are already there, we just did not have a proper system in place were these case are captured and reported. Also, the level of awareness and diagnosis have improved tremendously in the last few years.”

SGMC also provide care for general medical issues.