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Leonard Ncube, Victoria Falls Reporter
ZIMBABWE has a critical shortage of oncologists with only 18 specialists in urban areas with no one operating in rural areas.
Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
An oncologist in the Ministry of Health and Child Care Mr Samson Nyamazana told journalists at the Victoria Falls Press Club recently that currently no oncologists are deployed to rural areas.
He was in Victoria Falls to officiate at the 15km road race organised by the Zimbabwe Foundation for Prostate Cancer Trust (ZFPCT) to raise awareness about prostate cancer, one of the major killer diseases in men.
Mr Nyamazana said Government is making efforts to train more specialists including nurses and doctors to provide the service countrywide.
“Government is making efforts to train doctors and nurses to be able to screen and diagnose prostate cancer. There is no oncologist deployed to rural health clinics as the country has about 16 or 18 trained oncologists,” said Mr Nyamazana.
He said more nurses need to be trained to provide services at district level.
“There is a group that is being trained and it’s now an obligation that whenever there is recruitment for oncologists there should be some from rural districts. We need a supermarket approach for every patient that visits a health facility to be able to access services hence the need to train more oncologists,” said Mr Nyamazana.
He said prostate cancer is prevalent in the country with 63 percent of victims being men above 65 years.
One in seven men were diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2016 according to the Zimbabwe Cancer Registry Statistics and 7 265 cases were diagnosed. The death rate is high, Mr Nyamazana said.
—@ncubeleon
Online Reporter