Oluwabukola Akinleye, the Chief Operation Officer of Life Empowerment Anchors Hope, a charity foundation, said the group had screened no fewer than 5,000 women for cancer.
Akinleye told the News Agency of Nigeria on Monday in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, that LEAH, a pet project of Omolewa Ahmed, the wife of the Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, had established a diagnostic and cryotherapy treatment centre for cancer in May 2013.
According to Akinleye, there is an alarming increase in the cases of breast cancer among women in the country.
She noted that the centre was established following the high number of letters of assistance for the treatment of cancer received by the foundation.
She said: “The rate at which the foundation received letters from people affected by cancer and those who needed financial support for the treatment was alarming.
“Unfortunately, most of the people who requested for the support and for chemotherapy were already at the end stage.
“The founder of the centre was so much concerned about these people that she came up with the initiative to help the society fight cancer at a subsidised rate for treatment.”
Akinleye enjoined women to muster courage and get screened, saying that the chance of surviving the disease if detected early was high.
Akinleye, who said there was now a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, added that vaccination was better and less expensive.
“Cancer can be resident in the body for about 15 years without manifesting its symptoms, but it can be discovered at the early stage through medical checks and screening and it can be nipped in the bud,” she said.
Akinleye said that the disease was becoming prevalent in developing countries due to late presentation, ignorance, illiteracy, religious beliefs, stigmatisation, taboos and fear of the unknown.
