Following the terrible hardship faced by cancer patients as a result of lockdown due to the Covid 19 pandemic, patients, care takers and non-governmental organizations have re-echoed the need to have the Uganda Cancer Institute (UCI) system decentralized to enable easy access to the cancer treatment and services.
In the online meeting organised by Uganda Cancer Society where media practitioners, and other actors in the health department came together to discuss post Covid 19, Sylvia Nakami, the Executive Director of Rays of Hope Hospice Jinja revealed that most of the Cancer patients in the east failed to meet their appointments with UCI due to the lock down since public transport was stopped.
She adds that what worries them more is that even after the opening of public transport in some parts of the country, the travel fares are away higher which makes almost impossible to travel from distant areas to UCI in Kampala thus a call to expedite the decentralize UCI system to at least all regional referral hospitals.
“palliative care for patients reach about 1100 people which is 10% of the 3.5 million population suffering from cancer annually”
In the same way one of the patients who preferred anonymity in addition to decentralizing the system, he urged government to make medicines or drugs always available at no cost since they are too expensive yet most of the patients are too vulnerable and indeed poor.
He said “transport became worse for us to reach cancer centers where we can get drugs because all the attention was put on Covid 19 that is why many of patients passed away within the period of the pandemic”
