Cancer Burden in Kenya: World Cancer Day 2025
‘Most of the research conducted on cancer is stored in journals and scientific language and has not been translated to a language that can be understood by the community for maximum impact.’
‘Most Cancer diagnosis is done when it's at an advanced-stage 4 cancer.’
‘The rate of cancer awareness is quite low in Kenya.’
‘Is it that the systems have failed us or is it a personal failure on our Health systems on health check-ups?’
‘Cancer affects all the human’s body parts except the hair and nails.’
These are some of the insights and introspective questions that were highlighted during the ‘Kikao’ Live session by TV 47 Kenya and hosted at the University’s Chandaria Auditorium on World Cancer Day on February 4, 2025.
The Theme for this year’s commemoration of World Cancer Day was, ‘United by Unique’
Kikao brought together Cancer patients, Cancer Survivors, Caregivers, Government representatives, academia and other health stakeholders.
Issues that were discussed highlighted the plight of a cancer patient including, misdiagnosis, late prognosis, lack of follow-through, lack of capacity to deal with the increasing number of patients that need medical attention, and bureaucracy on access to cancer treatment and services among others.
It was quite emotional when a cancer survivor, Mwende Mutiso narrated her diagnosis of breast cancer at 23 years old, how she started treatment, and ended up getting pregnant. She shares her journey bravely and is optimistic that she will overcome the cancer. She also mentioned the psychosocial support that she received during the whole process.
The Deputy Director General of Health, Ministry of Health, Dr. Sultani Matendechero noted that the Government has put in place policies to manage Cancer treatment in Kenya, National Cancer Treatment Protocols, The National Cancer Screening Guidelines, National Cancer Control Strategy 2023-2027 and the National Cancer policy. The Government aims to reduce Cancer infections by 2030, reduce the rates of Breast Cancer and rolling out of the Universal Health Coverage.
Dr. Matendechero acknowledged how expensive the cancer treatment is and how inaccessible for a big percentage of kenya’s population. He emphasized that the goal of UHC is to enable early screening to reduce the rates of cancer patients that need to go to extremes when it comes to late diagnosis of cancer.
Dr. Oyiro Omondi, Department of Internal Medicine, UoN, noted that there needs to be a translation of research output from mechanical language to a language that the community can understand and therefore use that knowledge to contribute to the reduction of cancer. ‘We assume that the people know about cancer, but most Kenyans do not know. There is need for increased awareness among Kenyans.’
Dr. Francis Wanyama, UoN Department of Human Pathology noted that’75% of patients diagnosed with ovarian cancer are at stage 3 and 4. The problem we have in Kenya is that we lack enough human resource to diagnose cancer. We lack significant resource allocation to fight misdiagnosis. We spend too much on politics and not enough on health.
The clarion call is that we all have a role to play in combating this global monster, Cancer.
