The National Coordinator of the National Cancer Control Programme at the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Uchechukwu Nwokwu has said that 7.2 per cent out of 127,000 cancer cases recorded annually in Nigeria are children.
Nwokwu said this at the sideline of public enlightenment on childhood cancer commemorating 2025 International Childhood Cancer Day (ICCD) on Saturday in Abuja.
ICCD is commemorated globally every 15 February to raise more awareness of childhood cancer and to galvanise support for children and adolescents with cancer, the survivors and their families.
‘Data is being collated; however, the current one we have shows that we have 127,000 cancers annually in Nigeria, out of which 7.2 per cent are children’, he said.
He said the survival rate for childhood cancer was 80 per cent if patients were diagnosed early, accessed treatment, and their body systems could respond to the medication.
‘The cancers that are common among children are the leukaemia. Meanwhile, adults also have leukaemia, but the most common childhood cancer is leukaemia, but it is about the fourth most common cancer in adults.
‘Coincidentally, children have more tendency to survive than adults because their systems are still very functional.
‘They have the capacity to resist some of the side effects of the drugs used to treat them, and they recover quite fast. Also, if they have the opportunity to do stem cell transplant, they can survive it’, he said.
Regarding government response to childhood cancer, the national coordinator said efforts were in place to include it in the Cancer Health Fund.
According to him, there was this omission of attention toward childhood cancers before now.
‘But that has changed, and I am sure that in 2025, childhood cancer will be captured in the cancer health fund. So, going forward, children can now access their care from that fund’, he said.
