Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Tuesday inaugurated the first region’s top a cancer centre that will provide advanced radiation therapy treatments for 150 patients per day.
The new center located at Rwanda Military Hospital at Kanombe, a suburb of Kigali city is expected to complement the existing prevention, diagnosis and treatment services related to chronic hepatitis C and other cancers associated with Human Papillomavirus (HPV) using two new radiotherapy machines.
Currently Rwanda has three well-known treatment options for cancer including chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy, but radiotherapy has been the unavailable option of the three options, health officials said.
The radiotherapy centre comes to supplement the existing chemotherapy facility which was established at another cancer Cancer Centre located at Butaro, a village in Northern Rwanda.
Construction of the Radiotherapy Center was first announced in November 2017 during the African Cancer Conference.
Cancer has become a leading cause of indisposition and mortality worldwide – with approximately 14 million new cases and 8.2 million cancer-related deaths every year, according to World Health Organisation (WHO).
In Africa, 60% of cancer cases require radiation, and Rwanda has been sending patients outside the country – mostly India for such medical services.
CU/abj/APA