Accra, Jan. 31, GNA – African Cancer
Organisation (ACO) has established a Cancer Information Service (CIS) Centre in
Accra, to offer information about cancer prevention to businesses and the
general public.
The aim was to promote awareness of cancer
and early detection through culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate
cancer prevention training programmes.
This was in a statement issued by the ACO
and copied to the Ghana News Agency on Friday.
It said: “This we believe will help prevent
people from getting exposed to avoidable cancer risk factors and also help
downstage cancers by early-detecting the disease at stages where cure is often
possible, which will ultimately help avert the currently prevailing high
incidence of cancers in Ghana.”
The statement said the goal of the project
was to ensure that everyone living in Ghana has easy access to cancer
prevention information service, adding that it would also establish the needed
infrastructure and build capacity of personnel required to provide cancer
information outreach service to businesses and the public.
“The trained cancer information specialists
will either provide interaction by telephone, e-mail, instant messaging, social
media, in-person visit or on-site training for institutions, businesses and the
general public,” it said.
The statement said the CIS would distribute
educational materials to people about cancer, its prevention, causes and risk
factors, signs and symptoms of cancer, cancer diagnosis, cancer treatment,
management and support available systems.
It said; “The CIS will navigate people to
appropriate facilities for screening, further diagnosis, management and
support. ACO CIS, tailored to the socio-economic and cultural context, is to
ensure that cancer information is available to everyone who is eligible.”
The statement said although much remained to
be learnt about cancer, enough was now known about the causes of cancer and
means of control for suitable intervention to have a significant impact and
that there was solid evidence that making cancer information available and
diagnosing it at an early stage would reduce deaths from cancer.
“Most Africans cannot currently access
curative therapies, state-of-the-art surgery or expensive cancer drugs that are
the mainstay of cancer care in developed nations. At the same time up to 50 per
cent of cancers are preventable, and a third of all cancers could be cured if
detected early,” it said.
The statement said scaling up primary
prevention and early diagnosis was the most cost-effective ways of dealing with
cancer in Africa and Ghana as a whole and that the ACO was looking for partners
with similar mandate to collaborate to sustain the CIS.
GNA