THE much awaited National Cancer Treatment Guidelines, which are envisioned to assist the government have proper forecast of cancer medicines and other services, are in their final stages.
The Ocean Road Cancer Institute (ORCI)
Executive Secretary and Oncologist, Dr Julius Mwaiselage, exclusively
told the ‘Sunday News’ that they and the Ministry of Health, Community
Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, are organising a
stakeholders’ meeting to be held in the first week of next month, to
review the guidelines.
"All hospitals involved in cancer care
in the country have been involved including ORCI, Muhimbili National
Hospital (MNH), Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC), Bugando
Medical Centre (BMC), Benjamin Mkapa Hospital (BMH), Agakhan Hospital,
Mbeya Zonal Referral Hospital (MZRH) and Muhimbili University of Health
and Allied Sciences (MUHAS).
"It is anticipated that when the
guidelines are launched on February 4, next year, during World Cancer
Day, all hospitals in Tanzania should use the same guidelines for cancer
treatment," he explained.
On Wednesday, the American Society for
Clinical Pathology (ASCP), Novartis from Switzerland and the American
Cancer Society (ACS), announced to choose Tanzania among three
Sub-Saharan countries to benefit from their programme for improvement of
cancer intervention. Others are Uganda and Ethiopia.
Dr Mwaiselage said that Tanzania will be
a beneficiary of several regional and international initiatives aimed
at improving cancer diagnosis and treatment in Africa.
Cancer diagnosis is a challenge in most
African countries, particularly on immunohistochemistry (IHC) due to
absence of these services in most diagnostic centres, as a result of
lack of expertise as well as availability and cost of equipment and
reagents.
Most countries in Africa, including
Tanzania, do not have a major challenge of convectional cancer diagnosis
by studying of microscopic anatomy of cells and tissues of living
organism or cytology of biopsy/tissues; in Tanzania all zonal referral
hospitals namely BMC, KCMC, MZRH, MNH, ORCI and a number of big private
hospitals can diagnose cancer by histology and cytology.
The only challenge in this service is longer turn-around times for the results due to few staff and equipment.
“The major challenge in many countries
including Tanzania is limited capacity to do IHC, which is the basis for
a targeted therapy in cancer treatment, leading to better outcome of
treatment. Cancers which definitely is important to do IHC includes
breast cancer, lymphoma, prostate cancer,” he explained.
The Executive Secretary cited that
Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH) and Ocean Road Cancer Institute are
performing IHC, but to a very limited extent due to challenge of
equipment and other supplies.
Thus, through Novartis, ASCP and ACS,
Tanzania will be among countries that will benefit in having the
capacity to perform IHC through support for equipment, supplies and
staff training. This will greatly improve targeted cancer treatment
which has been shown to have better outcome.
Tanzania is also among six countries
which have been given access to procuring cancer medicines from
manufacturers at reduced prices through initiative by Clinton Health
Access Initiative (CHAI). The pharmaceutical companies which have
already agreed for this initiative are Pfizer and CIPLA.
“The Medical Stores Department can
procure 16 types of medicines from these manufacturers at prices which
have been reduced by 50-60 per cent of what is procured now.
This implies that Tanzania will be able
to procure twice the amount we are procuring now, with the same budget
and hence other hospitals like Bugando Medical Centre and KCMC can
access these medicines,” he said.
Tanzania has seen a soaring number of
cancer cases in recent years, whereby 5,529 patients reported to the
country’s largest facility, ORCI based in Dar es Salaam, whereas in
2015, the number stood at 5,244 while in 2014 it was at 4,195. Back in
2013, the cancer patients were 3,776.
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