The Queen Elizabeth Hospital and a nongovernmental organisation will be joining forces to reduce the instances of colon cancer among Barbadians.
This has been revealed by chief executive officer Dexter James, who was answering questions during the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure debate in the House of Assembly Friday.
He said colon cancer care has been identified as a major programme the hospital would soon be launching.
James added the disease was the second most prevalent cancer in men and women, but it was treatable.
“There should be no reason why, today, citizens should be dying of colon cancer and therefore we are going to launch, in collaboration with an NGO, an aggressive colon cancer screening programme where patients can book an appointment, come into the hospital, have your CT colonography done and if we find any nodes then we send you on to the gastroenterology unit to have those nodes removed,” he said.
“We really believe that this is something we can aggressively wrestle down and remove it from one of the top five cancers in Barbados.”
The QEH boss said the hospital’s infrastructure not only had the capacity to “take care” of 95 per cent of the cancers, but that it had the human resources capital to address it as well. (HLE)