30% of children with cancer abandon treatment – doctors
Uganda Cancer Institute in Kampala. The institute has revealed that up to 30 percent of children with cancer abandon treatment after the initiation, a vice that increases treatment failure and reduces chances of survival. PHOTO/ FILE
What you need to know:
- Dr Jackson Orem, the UCI director, said plans are underway to establish centres in the four regions of Uganda to increase access to services.
The Uganda Cancer Institute (UCI) has revealed that up to 30 percent of children with cancer abandon treatment after the initiation, a vice that increases treatment failure and reduces chances of survival.
The institute said it receives an average of 700 children with cancer each year, and their survival rate is at 50 percent, which is below the 80 percent survival rate in developed countries.
Dr Joyce Balagadde Kambugu, the head of Paediatric Oncology at UCI, and Mr Moses Echodu, a childhood cancer survivor and programme director at Uganda Child Cancer Foundation (UCCF), told this newspaper yesterday that treatment abandonment is a result of poverty and depression.
“Treatment abandonment is the failure to return for curative treatment for four weeks from the appointed time. Treatment abandonment, in layman terms, connotes negligence but actually not, it just means you [the patient] didn’t return for so many reasons,” Dr Balagadde said.
She added: “Most of them [the causes of abandonment] are psychosocial in our country because there are very high costs related to treatment. At UCI, we provide medicine free of charge, we provide surgery at no cost and we provide radiotherapy and all that. But that is just 50 percent of what the parents need [to have their children treated].”
Mr Echodu said Covid-19 has increased treatment abandonment because so many parents who have children with cancer come from poor backgrounds.
“Most of these families have lost their sources of livelihood because of Covid-19 and so the parents sit back home instead of bringing their children for treatment. At least 85 percent of the medication is provided by cancer institute but the remaining should be catered for by the parents,” he said.
Mr Echodu said they are also seeing high levels of depression among both children with cancer and their parents.
“In children, the sources of depression are very simple –they are not socialising with their fellow children, they are not playing with their colleague because they want to avoid Covid-19,” he said.
Covid-19 has a ripple effect on children with cancer because they have reduced immunity that increases their risk of developing severe disease and even death.
The two spoke to this newspaper yesterday in Kampala at the 14th International Society of Paediatric Oncology Africa conference, which is running from Monday to Saturday under the theme “Innovate for Africa.”
Way forward
Back to treatment abandonment, Dr Balagadde appealed to Ugandans and development partners to increase support for parents of children with cancer.
“If the mother is a widow and she is the sole breadwinner, and she has left her children with the neighbours, then she might fail to come back. That is considered treatment abandonment. It is a very big problem in Uganda,” she said.
“The government can’t provide everything, it is prioritising the more expensive parts of treatment that are too expensive for the parent. We hope psychosocial support can be provided by the family and by the other members of civil society because it is not an easy thing to tackle,” he said.
Dr Jackson Orem, the UCI director, said plans are underway to establish centres in the four regions of Uganda to increase access to services.
“By 2026, we should have four regional cancer centres. As I speak, we have only broken ground for the one in Gulu and it is the only one for which we have resources,” Dr Orem said.
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