Cancer care should be given priority and it’s urgent to start environmental redress

I have just been to New Orleans, Louisiana to Bourbon Street of course but most importantly to attend the Annual Longshoremen Conference dedicated to dealing with claims arising out of workplace injuries covered under this law. At the end of the conference, three doctors began spelling out the calamity that cancer has become. Their thesis is that cancer is a free agent in the environment that attaches to vulnerabilities in the victim.
 
The victim may be genetically predisposed to cancer, may be exposed to a cancer-causing agent for a limited or extended time and may develop cancer in a period as short as four months or more than 10 years. The cancer universe in Uganda is growing at an alarming rate. 

The Uganda Cancer Institute alone admits 6,000 patients a year and treats another 50,000 patients in its out-patient. Some cancers are associated with age, prostate in middle aged and older men, reproductive stages, for a while ovarian cancer was associated with the use of contraceptives, lifestyle, smoking for example. Then the random yet prevalent cancers, cancers of the breast that attack women who are either childless or have many children. 

The American doctor’s exposure theory is valid. There are now many families where husband and wife have died of cancer at such prolonged intervals sometimes more than 10 years.
As the senior citizen doctor continued to elaborate on the point of exposure; burn pits in US war theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan are being associated with a spike of cancer claims, I thought of the environmental Armageddon in the use of polythene bags in Uganda. The first attempt to ban kaveera came during the life of the 6th Parliament, 2001-2006, the parliament that lifted term limits but was defeated by a strong pro-business lobby. Uganda never got to taste the benefits of the ban on kaveera.

In 2023, polythene will be a key ingredient in the food preparation industry. Most food is packed in polythene, so are drinks. The downtown ladies cooking matooke prepare the local staple using kaveera to mash the bananas. There is extensive plastic litter on roads, drainage and water sources. The tragedy of kaveera is now in the gardens where plastic waste is everywhere. Organic farming in Uganda is now something of the past because climate change has only made pests and diseases more vengeful in their attacks on crops and livestock.

Recently, the Deputy Speaker of Parliament Thomas Tayebwa raised an alarm against banned substances coming from the European Union. Africa-EU trading terms allow export of products banned inside the EU to third party countries. Bigger operators like Monsanto conduct “research”, are developing genetically modified planting material unabated which can only survive with these chemicals creating a dependency of use, similar to what drug addicts experience. 

The picture-perfect tomatoes, green peppers we serve ourselves for salads are saturated in chemicals. The atrocious weeds in the garden are fought using weedmaster, a herbicide now trading at twice its price three years ago. By the time you add degraded processed foods, you have the full cycle which is now explaining why cancer patients at the Uganda Cancer Institute are as young as single digits, or teenagers.

One of the most chilling spectacles at the Cancer Institute are the painful pangs of the beloved ones of the deceased, when someone passes away. This is only exceeded by the lonely mortuary attendant pushing the gurney with a dead body after they pass on to the after-life. Given Parliament’s recent strong interest in social legislation, we should urgently be legislating to protect the lives of our population from the cancer epidemic. The health of fish stocks is often a good indicator. Fish react immediately to chemicals and effluent discharge. 

Lake Victoria is losing fisheries at a rapid rate, partly due to overfishing, then addition of chemicals which in 2021 caused massive mortality of Nile perch and environmental pollution. Just like cancer cells kill the capacity of normal body cells to breathe, so do these discharges. Banning kaveera would be a first, then we start understanding more causes.

 Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-At-Law and an Advocate. [email protected]