By Cecilia Ologunagba
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is strengthening collaboration with the office of Kebbi State
Governor’s wife to champion early cancer detection to eliminate the disease in the country.
The WHO Office in Nigeria, in a statement posted on its website, said the collaboration would help in improving of the chances of successful treatment and create awareness for the purpose of eliminating the deadly disease.
According to the statement, the WHO Country Representative (WR), Dr Walter Mulombo disclosed this in a virtual meeting he held with Dr Zainab Bagudu, the wife of state governor.
Mulombo said he agreed to leverage on the established advocacy work by Bagudu to empower populations at risk, to make informed and positive choices about promoting their health.
Through the Medicaid Cancer Foundation which she founded, the Governor’s wife champions Cancer control, especially cancers affecting women and had mobilised resources through several advocacy visits to government officials.
Most recently, she led the advocacy on inclusion of cancer screening and treatment in the benefit package of the National Health Insurance Scheme.
Following her presentation, which showed success recorded, lessons learnt and residual challenges, Bagudu solicited for the alignment of her Foundation’s overall objectives with WHO’s goals towards cancer elimination goals.
She specifically requested technical support for capacity building to empower health workforce for better service delivery and promotion of women health seeking behaviour especially in the rural areas.
The statement, however, quoted Mulombo, as saying, “I am very impressed by your pedigree and commitment to health, especially in the area of cervical cancer.
“WHO in Nigeria looks forward to stronger collaboration in our journey towards achieving cervical cancer elimination and Universal Health Coverage (UCH).’’
He noted that the government’s drive to revitalise PHCs was an opportunity to scale up cervical cancer screening and treatment as one of UHC package to ensure everyone accesses healthcare services.
Bagudu led commemoration of the recent launch of the WHO Global strategy on Elimination of Cervical cancer.
She led the launch as a public health problem with lighting up of prominent places in Kebbi state including the Palace of Emir of Argungu and is a prominent champion of PHC in Nigeria.(NAN)
