By Tobias Lengnan Dapam
Wife of the President, Mrs. Aisha Muhammadu Buhari has called on stakeholders to engage more women in their effort to prevent the spread of cancer disease and the death of many.
A statement issued yesterday by Suleiman Haruna, the Director of Information to Wife of the President said Aisha made the call at the High-Level Regional Seminar on Cancer Awareness and Advocacy at Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso recently.
It added that Mrs. Buhari urged stakeholders to take advantage of decisions that will come out of the meeting and chart a clear course of action on cancer prevention.
Like in many countries, she said, Cancer is a major health challenge confronting Nigeria as it draws a lot in terms of resources for management and research. Mrs. Buhari declared that a lot is being done as part of efforts to improve cancer management in the country, citing the recent launch of the National Cancer Control Plan, which would guide the implementation of Cancer control activities across the national spectrum. She expressed the belief that the Plan will guide NGOs like my Future Assured in their advocacy and other support activities.
“We have already engaged wives of governors of Nigeria’s 36 states for the purpose of cascading the campaign against cancer to subnational levels and in the last 3 years, we have conducted screening for cervical and breast cancers that have attracted thousands of women.”
Mrs. Buhari said Future Assured programme has reached thousands of women with its empowerment and educational programmes in line with the 2016 Istanbul Declaration on Cancer Prevention, which recognized poverty and lack of education as some of the contributing factors to the rising incidence and prevalence of cancer disease.
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