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Rumbidzayi Zinyuke
Senior Reporter
Apostolic churches in Zimbabwe have embraced initiatives to educate their members about childhood cancers, in a significant step towards improving the survival rates of children diagnosed with the disease.
This comes as the Apostolic Churches Council of Zimbabwe (ACCZ) recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with KidzCan to train selected representatives from across the country on childhood cancers. The selected coordinators will in turn cascade information to other church members at provincial level.
The partnership aims to address a critical gap in health seeking behaviours among members of these religious communities, which often lead to delayed diagnosis and treatment.
Mrs Tsitsi Matenhese, a member of the New Way Evangelical Fellowship church from Manicaland, said the initiative would improve their understanding of cancers that affect children.
“As churches, there are many things which we did in ignorance. We have seen adults with cancer but we did not know that it can also affect children so sometimes we would think that a child with cancer was being attacked by evil spirits.
We are grateful for this training which will help us to understand what cancer is, how it develops and where it is found in children. When we go back to our churches, we can then identify these cases and quickly refer them to health centres where they can get help,” she said.
Another childhood cancer coordinator from Matabeleland South, Mrs Conservative Ndlovu said she was ready to learn more about childhood cancer and make an impact among her fellow church members.
“Cancer is a very painful disease so when I heard that children can also be affected and they can be treated, I realised that it was important for me to learn about how to help those in my church. This has equipped me with the knowledge to refer children who may be affected to the proper channels. I believe other churches in the province will welcome this initiative and save the lives of children,” she said.
Apostolic sect churches, which form a significant part of Zimbabwe’s religious landscape, have traditionally held unique beliefs and practices regarding healthcare. These beliefs have sometimes led to delays in seeking medical attention for illnesses, including childhood cancers.
Said Mrs Mathrine Mapako from Zion Apostolic Church (1923), a representative from Mashonaland West: “Zion Apostolic Church allows its members to seek health care. We have seen quite a number of cancer cases in the church but sometimes we did not know how to handle them. This programme has come at the right time to educate us about these diseases. We now know that not every pain or wound is a result of a spiritual attack so we should refer people to hospitals.”
She encouraged other apostolic churches to allow people seek medical care to avoid losing children to treatable diseases.
KidzCan executive director Mr Daniel Mckenzie said the engagement of apostolic churches would contribute towards the achievement of the World Health Organisation global initiative plan to increase the childhood cancer survival rate to 60 percent by the year 2030.
“Almost 60 percent of the people are seeking alternative treatment, either going to a traditional or faith healer hence this partnership. We want them to play their part,” he said.
He said the coordinators had been educated on the different referral pathways to ensure that they could identify affected children and make sure they end up at the hospital.
Each year, an estimated 400 000 children and adolescents aged 0 to 19 years old across the globe develop cancer.
In Zimbabwe, there has been an increase in the number of children suffering from cancer with the survival rates for these children currently at 20 percent, mostly due to poor health seeking behaviour by most caregivers.
Mr Mckenzie said it was important to address these attitudes in the communities.
“You find that in other countries, a child just coughs or sneezes, the first thing the mother does is take that child to a doctor. But it is not the case with us. We do not listen to our children. A child says they have a stomach ache or a back ache, we tend not to believe that child.
And yet, early detection is the best protection. The cancers are the same, the children are the same, the treatments are the same. So why then should ours have a low survival rate? It is because we are not presenting our children early to give our doctors the opportunity to treat them,” he said.
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