National Obstetrics and Fistula Center, (NOFIC) Abakaliki, Ebonyi state has screened about 21, 209 cervical and breast cancer patients in Ebonyi State, from 2010 to date.
The Medical Director of NOFIC, Prof. Johnson Obuna, disclosed this during a courtesy visit paid on him by members of the Correspondents Chapel, Nigeria Union of Journalists, (NUJ) Ebonyi state council.
He also revealed that the center has repaired about 3,063 fistula patents since 2008 when the center began to date, 1,273 prostate cancer patients. Treated about 513 cervical cancer, 438 breast cancer and 43 prostate cancers.
“In terms of prostate surgery, we have handled about 849 from 2010 till date. We have screened 868 cases in mammogram services from 2012 to date and we have rehabilitated 486 fistula patients”, he added.
His said the major reason the center took up maternity services last year, October, was to help curb incessant cases of fistula.
“Most of these women developed VVF because they didn’t have money to attend hospital and pay in the hospital where they will deliver. So, they keep on having the fistula. There are some of these women that after repair, they get pregnant. They go back and deliver and will develop another fistula.
“Since we started these maternity services, all those women who have fistula and they got pregnant, they come here and we do caesarean section for them free. Since we started the maternity services, we have done 94 caesarean section and then 299 deliveries.
“There was a 16 year old girl that got pregnant and we did her surgery free. That girl if she had delivered elsewhere, she would have had fistula.
Obuna, said the hospital has began offering services for those that were abused, since last year, adding: “Since our hospital is already offering services for the abused, we said let us take all the abused and make sure that this centre is a centre you can come you handle and types of abused. So, we now started gender-based violence unit and we built a brand new bungalow for that.
“Since we started, we have handled 55 cases of gender-based violence cutting across rape, FGM, economic and physical abuse”.