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It will focus on paying tribute to the medical and healthcare workers and the positive impact they have on the lives of children with cancer . The Mirror interviewed some members of the health team of the Childhood Cancer Unit of the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, Ridge over lunch to share their work experiences and extent of the problem in the country to mark the day.

Mrs Dorcas Esi Acquah,
Specialist Nurse in Oncology
Taking care of children with cancer can sometimes be emotionally and physically draining. Physically because sometimes after all the efforts you put into helping the patient, they go home and the parents of the children for a variety of reasons decide to stop coming for the treatment mostly because the child feels better.

Emotionally, you are unable to express your sad feelings when the patient is in pain because they are looking up to you for hope.
As a nurse, I’m expected to give the parents of such children moral support. Sometimes, there are certain things the parents or guardians of the patients are unable to tell other members of the team but because of my close contact with them, they are able to talk to me.

It can be their difficulty in footing the cost of treatment. This goes a long way to make treatment easier. Otherwise, they may not even bring the children to the clinic to honour their treatment schedules. Mostly, the children here are so young that they cannot say what is wrong with them so as a nurse specialised in oncology, I am part of the first line of communication between the patient and the doctor as soon as they arrive in hospital.

I also administer medications such as chemotherapy after the doctor prescribes and the pharmacist reconstitutes it. I also help the patients deal with the side effect of the treatment which we try a lot to minimize and make it easier to cope. I also help prepare them for surgery if need be, help them psychologically, give counselling, education and moral support.

Dr Alfred Bortsie, Medical Doctor
It is a blessing to be part of the team helping these children to come out of the cancer they are suffering from and I am very happy when these children who were previously sick recover and start jumping and playing around the wards. It’s not a good feeling when a child dies of cancer because they are our patients whom we have invested in.

I urge children with the condition never to give up. They should be hopeful and cheerful because there are brighter days ahead and cure is in sight. I urge parents to bring their children to the hospital and if a cancer diagnosis is made, they should be compliant with the treatment.

Some of them go and never show up again after their first treatment session and then return in a very bad state.

Anastasia Attoh, Senior Nursing Officer and Nurse Manager
Childhood cancers to a large extent are not preventable because for most of them the cause is unknown. But what is important is that early detection and early treatment can lead to cure.
When parents or guardians see the signs in their children, they should not look at them with superstition.

Often, when they are diagnosed in the early stages and they go back to the community, people say all manner of things about it and if care is not taken, they will listen to these superstitious tales and refuse the hospital treatment which eventually leads to the needless deaths of these children.

The earlier they start the treatment, the better the chances of being cured. As health workers, we will do our best and they should bear in mind that about 90 per cent of childhood cancers are curable and early detection and early treatment is the best option.

As we celebrate International Childhood Cancer Day, I wish all children with cancer the best and it is my hope that more of them will survive to tell the good story. I am always happy and overwhelmed when I see a significant improvement in any of my patients.
Even though we know the prognosis for childhood cancer is good, some who present with advanced disease may die and we talk to the parents and guardians about this before treatment, I feel sad when any of such patients dies.

 Bridget Gyang, Senior Nursing Officer
We need more people and institutions to sponsor the treatment of childhood cancers.

The cost of treatment cannot be borne by more than 90 per cent of families and as we wait eagerly for the NHIS package to treat childhood cancers to be implemented, we are still calling on individuals and organisations to continue to support the treatment of these children who are the future of this country.

As we celebrate the day, I think there should be increased awareness of the signs and symptoms of the condition. Sometimes when these things occur, parents use alternative therapies such as herbs and by the time they decide to report to the hospital, it is too late.

Some also hide the condition of their children. They don’t want people to know the child has cancer while some view it as witchcraft.
As health workers we need to educate ourselves on childhood cancers, spread the right message about it, continue to counsel parents whose children have been diagnosed to accept it as any other disease that medication offered in hospital can cure.­

 Dr Legbel Ekpata,
Senior House Officer
Although childhood cancers are highly curable, the cost of childhood cancer treatment is a problem in most low and middle-income countries. Sadly, the problem is huge in Ghana.

As a result of this, the average Ghanaian family cannot afford to pay for diagnosis and treatment for childhood cancers. Even those who might be able to start, along the way, often run out of funds. So, it is the financial costs that make the condition a problem in the country.

At the end of the child’s first admission to confirm the diagnosis and receive treatment, when you give them the bill, they will usually exclaim ‘Ei! if the first medication or diagnosis is costing this much, can I do the rest?’ It is for this reason that here at the Greater Accra

Regional Hospital (GARH), we advise parents to take it one day at a time. We also provide them with a lot of support to the extent of taking care of the treatment cost of most of the children through financial assistance from philanthropic individuals, groups and some corporate bodies. I’ve never seen anybody turned away from the hospital because of their inability to take care of the treatment cost of their children.

Once treatment commences, compliance is key to cure. Parents receive a lot of counselling on all these and some who cannot afford regular transportation to hospital to receive continuous treatment are assisted by the Unit to cover these other expenses because some children live very far away from the hospital such as Central and Eastern.

As we celebrate International Childhood Cancer Day, my message to parents is that cancer is not a death sentence. We have had good outcomes with most cases. To health workers, my message is that the fact that we are dealing with children does not mean they cannot have cancer and that is why it is important that when they notice signs such as a child having recurrent unexplained anaemia, persistent fever and frequent hospital visits, they should probably dig deeper.

You don’t lose anything if you check whether the child has cancer and it turns out not to be, but you will lose the child if you miss the diagnosis of cancer and it turns out to be. If you delay in thinking about it and the disease spreads from the original site to distant sites in the body, it becomes a very difficult disease to treat and very often the outcome of treatment is poor.