DOUBLE PAIN OF OUR CANCER PATIENTS

A FEMALE police officer recently pleaded in the media for money for cancer surgery. 

“I am very far from my (financial) goal,” she agonised, and “I am in urgent need of leaving to get the treatment done.” 

A few days earlier, another national, a mere teenager, died at a hospital halfway around the world, where he had flown for urgent cancer care. 

There are other such cases of cancer patients requiring life-saving care, sometimes after late medical diagnoses and weak treatment. 

Most of us know people who are stricken with cancer or who succumbed to the disease. 

You are extremely fortunate if this cruel ailment has not impacted your circle of loved ones. 

I lost my beloved sister some years ago after she had rallied for six years until she was struck with a recurrence. 

I have seen dear friends and colleagues fall victim. 

The wrenching sight of a healthy, able-bodied person wasting away to a horribly painful and agonisingly slow death is heartbreaking and life-altering. 

Trinidad and Tobago has a high cancer mortality rate, the effect of lifestyle, diet, alcohol and tobacco use, and other lethal factors. 

About 3,000 people contract the disease each year. 

An ageing population (15 percent is now over 60) makes more people vulnerable. 

Among men, prostate, colon, lung, stomach and various hematologic cancers are most common, and among women, they are breast, cervical, ovarian, colon and endometrial. 

And yet, there are inadequate screening tests and no scientific studies that could lead to prevention, especially of lifestyle-caused cancers. 

Even worse, there is no facility providing comprehensive, state-of-the-art diagnoses and treatment, with skilled professionals, modern equipment, same-day surgery, outpatient clinics, and other crucial services. 

Oh, yes, there was a plan to construct an up-to-date oncology centre, “to transform the way cancer is treated in Trinidad and Tobago,” according to UDECOTT, its proposed project manager. 

But after a failed start, a legal conflict with the building contractor and a lack of official will, the oncology centre project collapsed. 

Taxpayer funds went everywhere else except to save the lives of the critically ill. 

Patients continue to sacrifice their dignity by begging strangers for money to travel abroad for surgeries, even as they are nursing the ailment. 

The government added some facilities at St. James Medical Complex, and smugly rebranded it a cancer centre. 

But the fact that patients must seek medical care abroad proves that the St. James centre does not provide the full suite of essential services. 

Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh, ever a man of bluster, said the centre would provide “first-world cancer treatment.” 

Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley theatrically claimed that the government saved money in setting up the St. James centre instead of establishing a facility for holistic care. 

Neither is true. 

There is a pressing need for a modern integrated centre offering early diagnostic services and universal care by knowledgeable experts. 

Rowley and Deyalsingh are showboating as T&T remains without a scientific and all-inclusive response to a crisis that is snapping away citizens’ lives. 

Along with medicating patients is the urgent obligation to determine why so many people are falling victim to this woeful disease. 

A recent international study highlighted the “need for national investment to improve the epidemiology of cancer in Trinidad and Tobago and to ultimately guide much-needed cancer control and prevention initiatives in the near future.” 

Until the authorities appreciate this critical necessity, we would continue to have a high number of patients. 

And, along with fighting the disease, ailing nationals would be forced to plead for money for surgeries abroad. 

In these modern times, no person should have to undergo that double pain. 

“I am trying to keep it together,” the female police officer said. 

“It’s a difficult fight, very difficult.”