The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof Muhammad Pate said three major cancer facilities with equipment investments will be commissioned by May 2025.

Pate made this known during Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily monitored by our correspondent on Monday.

He said, “For the first time in Nigeria’s history, six major cancer infrastructure, and equipment investments were approved by Mr President (President Bola Tinubu) early last year, of which they are already underway, and three of them will be ready by May 2025, to be commissioned; Nigeria has never had it.

“So that those who are suffering from cancer, that is the high level of care that is needed, it is a tertiary service. We will have the linear accelerators, the brachytherapy, and other diagnostic equipment to allow them to afford good quality cancer care in Nigeria in those six facilities.”

The minister noted that the government also flagged off 10 other major cancer diagnostic centres across the country five months ago.

He stated that 201 tertiary facilities have had infrastructural upgrades and equipment, including the Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan, Computed Tomography scans, and anaesthesia equipment in the last year.

“We are going to do more in 2025, but the human resources and the training of that also is an important element; that goes beyond the primary health care, and the Federal Government is investing in it.

“We have expanded the federal facilities. In the last year, the Federal Medical Centre, Epe, in Lagos, (there is a) new one in Ekiti, and the President just approved a new Federal Teaching Hospital in Akure, Federal Medical Centre in Southern Kaduna, in Kafanchan. (There is an) upgrade of hospitals in Nasarawa, the specialist hospital in Keffi is now a teaching hospital, and the Federal University of Health Sciences, Azare, has a teaching hospital, which was upgraded by this President.

“So we are expanding the tertiary hospitals’ capacity in Nigeria because, for a very long time, the capacity that we had when we were 150 million people is literally what we still have when we are about 230 million people. So, we’re expanding that, it’s not enough, but we need to do that.”

According to data from the Global Cancer Observatory, there were 127,763 new cancer cases and 79,542 deaths in 2022.

For both sexes, the data showed that breast cancer led the chart with an estimated 32,278 cases (25.3 per cent); followed by prostate cancer with 18,019 cases (14.1 per cent); cervical cancer with 13,676 (10.7 per cent); colorectum cancer with 8,114 (6.4 per cent); Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma cancer 5,194 (4.1 per cent); and others 50,482 (39.5 per cent).

In 2023, the Director General of the National Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment, Prof Usman Aliyu said statistics indicate that an estimated 78,000 people died as a result of cancer-related complications in 2020.

Out of this number, 44,699 were females while 34,200 were males, and it is estimated that there are over 120,000 new cancer cases every year in Nigeria.