Story by Abigirl Tembo, Health Editor
SEPTEMBER is recognised globally as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, a time dedicated to shining the spotlight on the growing burden of childhood cancers and the life-saving importance of early detection.
In Zimbabwe, health advocacy organisation KidzCan is intensifying efforts to ensure that young lives are not lost to cancers that are treatable if identified early.
KidzCan Finance Manager, Mr Gift Marunda, said childhood cancers remain an area often overlooked in public health discussions, yet their incidence is rising both globally and locally.
“Worldwide, the cancer burden is increasing not just in terms of adult cancers but also in terms of childhood cancers, because most people do not know that children do get cancer, and as a result, it is an area that is often then neglected. We are now under the GICC programme which is the global initiative on childhood cancers to which Zimbabwe is a signatory ensuring that we increase the survival rate of children suffering from cancer to 60% by 2030.
“As KIDSCAN, we are glad that the government has come on board in terms of this initiative, and if you see the efforts that the government is putting in place in terms of even renovating major hospitals and so on, which are in themselves also a build-up to the 2030 threshold. As an organisation, we come in to complement government efforts in that regard, so basically this month of September, as you know, internationally it is been organised as a month for childhood cancer awareness, so we raise awareness in various ways.”
Mr Marunda emphasised that early detection, early referral, and early treatment are critical for survival, warning that many children present at hospitals late when treatment becomes more complex, costly, and less effective.
“As KIDZCAN we go to communities and one of the things that we emphasise on is early detection early referral early treatment and once that is done children can actually survive cancer the challenge that we are having is that children are submitting or presenting to the hospitals very And what that means is that cost of treatment becomes high, the chances of survival are actually then reduced, and we eventually then lose the children.
“You cannot defeat childhood cancer as one entity. The message that we are sending is, number one, children do get cancer. Number two, here are the early signs of some of the key childhood cancers that afflict children in this country,”Mr Marunda said.
The most common types of childhood cancer are leukaemias, brain tumours, and lymphomas, along with solid tumours such as neuroblastoma and Wilms tumour.
