A non- governmental organisation, Civil Society for Cancer Eradication in Nigeria, has commended the Federal Government’s review of the National Palliative Care and Chemosafe Policies.
The National Coordinator of the organisation, Elijah Elijah in Abuja, said the review would help to address the challenges cancer patients face in the country.
Elijah who is also the Vice President of Nigerian Cancer Society, said civil society was part of the process of developing the policies and would ensure that the policies would be implemented.
Palliative Care Policy is about cancer patients in critical conditions, while Chemosafe policy has to do with the safe administration of medicine to cancer patients.
The Federal Ministry of Health and stakeholders in the health sector had in October during the Cancer Week reviewed the policies.
“We are part of the development process; we are not going to stop at the development of the policy, we will ensure the policies are implemented. We are going to be on top of the situation to ensure that they are implemented”.
According to him, civil societies are very important in the development of policy documents for most developed projects for which health is cardinal.
“They are primarily responsible for awareness creation to the masses, especially in rural areas and they play a key role in cancer mitigation. People live in remote places, we go to remote areas to sensitive them on cancer and health related diseases; we also involve in home based nursing and support indigent patients.
“We need to support the government in reviewing this policy (Palliative Care policy) so that the right issues could be put in the document”.
Elijah further commended the Federal Government for achieving the feat, saying “It is a welcome development. As a matter of fact, civil societies have been yearning for this for long. We have been disturbing the ministry over the years to develop the policies. Without these policies, we can’t have direction and without direction, the government cannot come up with key programmes that will touch the lives of cancer patients,’’ he said.
