Cape Town -
Breast cancer patients in the state sector in South Africa can wait up to eight months to receive confirmation of their diagnosis – and up to nine months to start treatment.
These delays mean thousands of cancer sufferers are diagnosed too late for cure and can then only be treated for pain until they die, a coalition of NGOs has charged.
But many patients who should be receiving pain management treatment are often unable to access this at their district-level hospitals.
The bleak insights were presented at the launch of the Cancer Alliance Patients Rights Charter on Thursday. Timed to coincide with Human Rights Day, the charter calls for cancer patients to be afforded human rights in treatment and care.
It names cancer as a “critical public health problem” which must be established as a priority matter on the South African public health agenda.
Voicing deep concern at the profound impact of cancer on millions of lives, and on productivity and development in South Africa, the charter calls for the promotion of humanitarian treatment of people with cancer, stating that access to quality health care is a basic human right.
“South African health care resources are currently limited and must be distributed wisely, equitably and in a sustainable manner,” the charter states.
“The government should allocate cancer prevention and care resources appropriate to the relative human and economic burden of these diseases.
“Currently, achievable improvements in cancer survival remain unrealised due to insufficient emphasis on prevention and screening.”
The Cancer Alliance, formed in January last year, is South Africa’s first umbrella group of 19 cancer advocacy NGOs and advocates, representing about 80 percent of cancer NGOs.
Through the publication of its Cancer Patient’s Rights Charter, members are setting out their bottom line for future discussions with stakeholders involved in cancer control in South Africa.
Discussion topics include access to health facilities and cancer diagnosis and care services; the provision of essential drugs, especially with regard to palliative and pain control treatment; the establishment of a cancer registry that is well-funded and resourced; and to pursue a national public health strategy in controlling the burden of cancer.
Campaigner and chief executive of the Sunflower Fund, Tina Botha, who lost her son Chris Corlett to leukemia in 2000 when he was 17, after a three-year battle to find him a donor, is one of the executive committee members of the cancer alliance.
“Cancer control is a human rights issue and all leaders and organisations have to work together to defend the human right of access to care,” she said.
Fellow exco member Lauren Pretorius said one of the biggest problems facing cancer sufferers in South Africa was the fact that too many were being diagnosed too late to ensure they received treatments that would cure them.
“This leads to the unnecessary deaths of cancer patients in the public sector. They are basically having their pain managed until they die,” she said.
Waiting more than six months to receive diagnosis confirmation, and a further six months to start treatment, was “completely unacceptable”, said Pretorius.
“We have a right to access health care in our country and we all, as stakeholders, need to work together to get patients that right,” Pretorius said.
Botha said the launch of the alliance was “where the hard work starts”.
“Everybody who has come on board has to put their effort in and get down to some serious hard work. We are all running our own NGOs. We are all very, very busy, and this is after-hours extra work we are all putting in, but we are all committed.
“This is what we do,” she said.
Weekend Argus