By Edward Dankwah
Accra, Feb. 29, GNA – The Accra Golden Lions Club has engaged market women of Madina in the La Mawantanang Municipality to sensitise them on childhood cancer, a leading cause of death among children.
The sensitisation exercise was to provide the necessary information on childhood cancer to ensure an understanding of the life-threatening disease and encourage screening for early detection and treatment.
Members of the Club held placards with inscriptions such as, “Globally 37 per cent of children with cancer survive, but survival rates vary by region,” and “Each year, an estimated 400,000 children and adolescents of 0-19 years old develop cancer.”
Others are: “Childhood cancer cannot generally be prevented or detected through screening,” “In many countries, cancer is the second leading cause of death in children over 1 year of age, exceeded only by accidents.”
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency Mr Blaise Ackom, the Secretary for the Cancer Support Network Foundation, said globally about 400,000 children were diagnosed with a type of childhood cancer.
He said from 2015 to 2019, Ghana diagnosed 1,073 children with cancer and currently, every year, it is estimated that about 1,200 children are diagnosed with childhood cancer.
Globally a child was diagnosed with cancer every two minutes.
“Cancer is basically cells in the body that grow out of control,” Mr Ackom said, and that those cells did not “obey a rule” where they needed to die for new ones to form.
Childhood cancer diagnosis was difficult because usually children exhibited signs and symptoms of “normal” sicknesses making parents unaware of the signs and symptoms of the disease, he said.
He said the cause was unknown but risk factors like exposure to certain radiation could predispose children to developing cancer.
He advised the public, particularly parents, to pay critical attention to changes in their children, especially when they notice loss of weight, loss of appetite, unclear vision, and development of lumps around the abdomen and visit the hospitals on time for early diagnosis.
Mrs Jennifer Victoria Duodu-Mensah, the Chairperson of the Childhood Cancer Advocacy of the Lions Club, said the club was a humanitarian organisation that identified needs in society and tackled them.
She said it was essential to educate the market women to make an impact on their families and friends and urged agencies, non-governmental organisations, and patriotic citizens to spread the information as children were the future of the nation.
GNA