Fix the Angau cancer unit

PRIME Minister James Marape instructing three department secretaries to get the much talked-about cancer unit in at the Angau Hospital in Lae is long overdue.
Without mincing his words, he singled out the health secretary, finance secretary and planning secretary “(if) you want your jobs, make this sort of thing happen. People are dying”.
The only cancer unit in the county has been the centre of attention and debate for some years because of its failure to serve people suffering from cancer.
The ordeal of those who seek treatment in the country especially at the National Cancer Treatment Centre in Angau Hospital in Lae is something no one should be experiencing or going through if only those who were responsible to ensure there were specialists with equipment did their job right the first time.
The desperate cry and plea for those currently at Angau is to be able to live another day and hoping for a miracle to wake up to the news that the cobalt machine is working and it’s your turn today to receive treatment.
Many have passed on waiting for that dream to become a reality.
Because of what’s not available in the country, families pool together whatever little finance they and through fundraising and donation, they send their loved ones overseas to receive treatment.
Every week, you will come across a fundraising notice advising that funds raised will go towards the cost of sending someone overseas for treatment.
And the cost they have to bear is not on the airfares, accommodation, medical bills and others but the follow-up care and treatment.
The after-care of a cancer patient who has received treatment can really take its toll not on the family but most times on the patient who sees the struggle his/her family and friends go through to make them at least a month or a year longer.
Cancer knows no boundaries and does not select who to attack and it can bring down one very fast when it attacks.
Life can be very unfair but that is reality here in PNG.
In 2017, a deputy health secretary told a Special Parliamentary Committee on Public Sector Reform and Service Delivery there was no cancer radiation oncologist or cancer specialist available in the country to treat the increasing number of cancer patients. And the situation is still the same.
Oncology is a speciality where training cannot be done here in the country at the medical school.
It has to be done outside and it surely is a difficult field to specialise in.
If someone wanted to become an oncologist, they have to get down in an institution outside the country and depending on how they get through and pass the exams then they become an oncologist.
Following that, one has to be trained to become a radiation oncologist and that’s how long it takes.
He also made it clear that it was quiet difficult to train and recruit oncologists.
Whatever has transpired from 2017 is yet to be made public.
This is urgent because as we read, people are dying from cancer out there and if we have to continue to delay, imagine how many lives will be lost.
If the concerned secretaries do not work together to get this cancer up and running soon, they should be shown the door.