Being very moderate in our day-to-day lives, especially in eating and other things, offers the best opportunity to guard against the scourge of cancer.
This was the view of the Executive Director, St. Cyril Cancer Treatment Centre, Mrs. Moji Animashaun, the Guest Speaker at the Free Breast and Cervical Screening programme, recently held at the Covenant University Health Centre to commemorate the 2019 International Women’s Day.
She said that Nigeria was lagging behind other countries like the US in dealing with diseases such as cancer because, owing to those countries’ efficiency, about 98% of the cancer scourge was being tackled headlong due to early detection and treatment campaigns. This, according to her, was in contrast to Nigeria's, where a lot of people were dying due to the inability of the government and the people to take advantage of the benefits of early examination so as to know how to tackle the problem.
She posited that it was good for people, especially ladies, to know everything or as much as possible about their bodies as this would go a long way in helping to detect any unhealthy growth that may arise at any time and the faster this was discovered, the better the impetus to treat them.
While noting that awareness programmes like the Free Breast and Cervical Screening programme were very important because so many people abused drugs, including doctors, Mrs. Animashaun advised patients to visit doctors who were circumspect about their field and not quacks that would always be indecisive as this portended a grave danger to the patients.
She also used the occasion to speak to the male folks about the need to undergo prostate cancer test for early detection, in order to forestall the incidence of full-blown prostate cancer.
Declaring the cancer screening exercise open, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Covenant, Professor Akan Williams, who appreciated the Guest Speaker, reiterated that people needed to know their state of health in order to know how well they were. According to him, “If we don’t impact our environment, we are not doing ourselves any good.”
He stated that people could not be living in isolation while their environment was not in a good condition. “This is why Covenant is always undertaking community development impact initiatives aimed at alleviating the plight of the people in the University’s immediate environment and beyond,” he explained.
The Deputy Vice-Chancellor, however, implored members of the community to maximise the attendant benefits of the programme so as to justify the Management’s huge investment in it.
Earlier, Mrs. Ronke Asaolu, the Chairman of Covenant University Community Development Impact Initiative (CU-CDII), the convener of the programme, eulogised the Covenant Management for sponsoring the programme. While acknowledging contributions by Management to the success of the event, she stressed that such support would always help in improving the welfare of the whole Covenant community.
Mrs. Asaolu used the occasion to highlight various outreaches of the CU-CDII in the communities around Covenant University and how grateful those communities had been to the University.
Also present at the programme were the Registrar, Dr. Lanre Amodu; Chaplain, Pastor Kayode Martins; and Director, Financial Services, Mr. Paul Uwaje amongst others.
Some wives of faculty and staff underwent screening for cervical and breast cancer during the programme.