A call has gone to stakeholders in the Health sector to give data collection and management its rightful position in tackling health issues in the country.
Wife of Ondo State Governor, Mrs Betty Anyanwu-Akeredolu made this call while receiving in audience a delegation from EfferentCARES Initiative who were in her office to seek collaboration in the fight against CERVICAL CANCER in Nigeria.
EfferentCARES Initiative is a non-profit socially conscious organization dedicated to improving the health delivery through innovative solutions across Nigeria and Africa.
Mrs Anyanwu-Akeredolu frowned at what she called “nonchalant attitude” of some health workers towards data collection and management.
“It is funny the way things are done in some quarters in this country, we don’t have data, where they exist, most of them are fake figures, we need to pay more attention to data collection in this country,” she said.
She said data collection is key to solving health issues, adding that inadequate funding is a major factor responsible for data collection failure in Nigeria and advised that enabling environment, reasonable incentives and reorientation should be given to field workers whenever data collection exercise is to be conducted in order to have accurate and reliable data.
The first lady who is also the founder of Breast Cancer Association of Nigeria( BRECAN) commended EfferentCARES Initiative for their efforts in improving the health delivery across Nigerian and pledged BRECAN and government’s support to the war against CERVICAL CANCER in the State.
Earlier in her presentation, the leader of the delegation who is also the president of the organization, Ezinne Anyanwu, said EfferentCARES initiative has a target of impacting five million people every five Years through provision of inclusive health technologies to deserving health practitioners, health organizations, citizens and communities to enable access to quality health care.
Anyanwu said “CERVICAL CANCER is a common preventable disease yet according to world cancer research, 85% of cervical cancer cases occur in less developed countries and 17% of all deaths in West Africa occur in Nigeria”
According to EfferentCARES Initiative “26 Nigerian women die daily as a result of cervical cancer. 14,089 new cases are diagnosed annually and 64% of those women die as a result of late detection.
Women with early cervical cancer and pre-cancers have no symptom. Symptoms often do not begin until the cancer becomes invasive and grows.
EfferentCARES goal is to make sure the number of women who die as a result of late detection is reduced.”
She enumerated some of their impacts in remote communities in some African countries and called on BRECAN and office of the wife of Ondo State Governor to collaborate with them to make more impact in Ondo State.
Study @ Achievers University
