The Medical Women Association of Nigeria has embarked on a mega capacity building of health workers on cervical cancer screening, prevention, as well as general cancer awareness campaign in Ebonyi State.
The project is being executed in collaboration with the David Umahi Federal University Teaching hospital.
Other collaborators are the National Obstetric Fistula Centre, Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching hospital and the Ebonyi state Ministry of health.
The 17-day corporate health activity which started February 13 will run to the end of February, featuring also free cervical cancer awareness, some treatments and cervical cancer screening for women in the state.
It is part of activities marking the 2024 World cancer awareness month, observed in February every year.
Speaking at the David Umahi Federal University Teaching hospital, Uburu on Friday, during the grand finale of the training for doctors which also featured the official commissioning of DUFUTH’s Well Woman Centre, the wife of Ebonyi state governor, Uzoamaka Nwifuru, commended the tenacity of the medical women in ameliorating the health challenges facing families.
Nwifuru said: “Your focus on eradicating cervical cancer in Nigeria is a very commendable and applaudable step that shall help to curb in no small way, the menace of cervical cancer with its associated morbidity and mortality.”
Commissioning the Well Woman Centre, the governor’s wife, represented by the Commissioner for Health, Dr. Moses Ekuma, commended DUFUTH for their many breakthroughs in medicine.
She stressed, “Screening is one key ways to eradicate and abolish untimely deaths from a preventable disease like Cervical cancer.”
DUFUTH’s Chief Medical Director, Professor Uzoma Maryrose Agwu, while welcoming the guests, described the hospital’s Well Woman Centre, named after the governor’s wife as an innovative centre of excellence established to offer cancer and other holistic health services to women at minimal cost.
She described cervical cancer as the most common among women and identified lack of organized screening Programme as one of the impediments to the fight against the disease.
Agwu explained: “Year in year out, many women continue to suffer for this malignant disease due to absence of an organized screening programme targeted against cervical cancer.
“This zeal spurred the MWAN, in collaboration with DUFUTH, NOFIC, AE-FUNAI and the Ministry of Health to leverage on the usefulness of the world cancer awareness month to carry out a widespread cancer screening Programme for all women, and to engage in training and retraining of all health personnel to carry out this daunting task, even in the hinterlands, in order to drastically reduce its incidence among women and females in Ebonyi state and beyond.”
In her speech, the National president, Medical Women Association of Nigeria, Prof. Rosemary Ogu, said the Association passionately works towards ensuring that sensitization, information, capacity building and service delivery go on to ensure that everyone has good health.
She noted that though MWAN’s focus are on women and children, their services extend also to the men by virtue of their being part and parcel of the family.
Ogu informed that the capacity building programme would be stepped down to all general hospitals in Ebonyi state, and called for continued collaboration among relevant partners to curb the malignant disease.
“We ask everyone here to please, support.
“Cervical cancer can be eliminated; cervical cancer is a preventable disease.
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“It is heartbreaking to lose women to cervical cancer, something that is preventable,” Ogu lamented.
In their separate goodwill messages, the MWAN state President, Dr. Lilian Nwobashi and Dr. Chidiebere Osuagwu who represented the NOFIC CMD, Prof. Johnson Obuna, pledged their commitments to the cause of preventing the disease.
Nwobashi expressed gratitude to the national body of MWAN for the privilege of choosing Ebonyi State for this year’s campaign programme and capacity building.
Nwobashi emphasized that the State branch of MWAN was unrelenting in its drive to stemming the incidence of cervical cancer to zero level by 2030.
The capacity building also featured teachings on Lassa fever prevention and management as well as other common health issues.