No need to travel to India for cancer treatment, Kenyans told

The proportion of Kenyans going abroad for cancer treatment has not dramatically fallen despite the many investments Kenya has made in managing the disease, medics have complained. 

In October, the country acquired Sh350 million cyberknife system for cancer treatment, becoming the second country in Africa after Egypt to do so.

Three hospitals also have a PET CT scan that helps during cancer treatment.

Oncologist Nicholas Abinya, who is also the Kenya Society of Hematology and Oncology (KESHO) founder, complained many Kenyans are still travelling abroad yet most treatment is available here.

He said Kenya is ranked number three in cancer treatment in Africa after South Africa and Egypt.

“We still have people who believe that black people have no idea on how to do things yet this is not the case. The cost of going to India and coming back is very expensive. But the fact being that the cost of treatment is expensive in Kenya, it is not the health workers who will bring it down, it is the government,” he said.

Abinya said many Indian hospitals do not necessarily have better facilities than Kenya, but Kenyans still go there because of their mindset.

“We have cancer centres and cancer treatment facilities and what we have in this country both in private and public facilities do not exist anywhere in Africa apart from in Egypt and South Africa,” he said.

Prof Abinya spoke during the Kenya International cancer conference in Mombasa on Friday.

Kenya has about 16 radiation oncologists, but there is an ongoing training program at Agha Khan, Nairobi and Moi universities to expand the existing numbers.

The training is also happening in non-university institutes like Nairobi hospital among others.

He said that some people use lack of skills among professionals as an excuse and that is why they are going abroad to seek treatment.

“Let me tell you if your cancer cannot be cured in our base centres in Kenya, chances that it will be cured in the base centres in the world will be less than 10 per cent. When it comes to skills, we know the kind of cadres that we have and we have enumerated them but coming back to this country the numbers that we have are functional,” he said.

Abinya said the National Hospital Insurance Fund has also helped bring down out-of-pocket payments through its cancer treatment package.

He said cancer is a collection of more than 200 diseases.

Only 40 per cent of these cancers have known risk factors.

The head of the national cancer control program at the Ministry of Health Mary Nyangasi said there are inadequate healthcare providers who are specialized in cancer treatment.

“We have very few specialists in medical oncology who can provide chemotherapy. Therefore cancer care cannot be given in a community or in every county because we do not have specialized care,” she said.

She said the ministry and counties have established nearly ten regional cancer centres.

In Mombasa, there is a regional cancer centre at the Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital.

She said that apart from human resources, the other challenge in cancer care is the high capital investment required.

“In the spirit of UHC, we established the cancer regional centres and now we have 10 counties that are providing at least chemotherapy and surgery. We now can do radiotherapy and brachytherapy in the three of the regions,” she said.

She said that they are implementing Universal Health Coverage through a benefit health package that will be administered through NHIF.

This will help in improving the cancer package so that it does not cover only treatment but also the screening process.

“There are benefit packages that are within NHIF that cover screening therefore we encourage people who have the package to use the service because what we see is that there is the screening service but people do not go for screening,” she said.

Last year, more than 6,000 healthcare workers were trained on how to screen and treat cervical cancer before it spreads.

She said that 70 per cent of cancer patients visit health facilities for treatment when it is late and the disease has moved to stages three and four.

KESHO chairperson Miriam Mutebi said that according to 2020 data, 42,000 people were diagnosed with cancer and 27,000 died.

She said that despite advancements in treatment many patients are diagnosed with advanced disease. Many do not complete treatment.

She said this is due to cost, where patients sometimes have to pay from their pockets.

“Quite a number of different aspects of care sometimes result in financial problems and catastrophic health expenditure such that patients are actually breaking the bank and not able to complete their care,” she said.

“Another aspect why people do not complete the care is the social-cultural barriers that exist around cancer. There is a lot of stigma where patients do not want to disclose status.”

Mutebi said that it is much cheaper to treat early cancer than a more advanced cancer.

For the longest time, she said that the narrative has been cancer is equal to death. however, Mutebi said, cancer is like any other chronic illness and sometimes the treatment is shorter if detected early.

“We really need to change our health-seeking behavior, changing our knowledge, mobilizing our communities and really shifting the narrative that cancer equals to death,” she said.