Doris Obinna and Henry Uche
Managing Director of GreenLife Pharmaceutical, Mr. Ebere Nwosu, has called on government at all levels to provide more cancer diagnosis and treatment centres to save the lives of citizens afflicted with the disease.
He stated this during the groundbreaking ceremony for Clinix Cancer Centre in Lagos, yesterday, which also marked his 50th birthday.
Nwosu said the driving force behind the project was to save as much life as possible from the grip of cancer disease and promised that the project would be completed in two years.
“The deficiency in cancer facilities in the country and the incessant deaths caused by cancer triggered me to embark on the multi-million naira project. We don’t have sufficient cancer facilities and machines in Nigeria. And because cancer issue is so dear to me, that is why we chose to support the existing ones. We are coming with two more machines to combat this deadly disease. I decided to lay the foundation today being my 50th birthday hoping to round off in two years. This cancer centre would help to save money for the government as our people will not run outside the country for cancer medical care. As for cost to access our services, we shall make it very affordable so that people don’t die because they couldn’t pay medical bills,” he said.
He said the centre would provide 100 bed spaces ,while stating that ‘nuclear medicine’ remained the basic practice to solve every kind of cancer challenge.
“We have one of the best diagnosis centres in Nigeria. So when we diagnose, we found out that treatment is a big issue; patients either go to Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) or any other centre, and what we hear thereafter is that the machines are down, which eventually leads to death. So because of that we decided to establish this state- of -the- art cancer centre. We don’t want to see people die unduly, if you go to LUTH, they’re fully booked till 2021, which is not supposed to be. We have been into diagnosis, now we are going into hospitals. I am doing this because I want to touch lives, but if you don’t have the heart of flesh, you can’t do this, because you have a lot to sacrifice to save lives,” he said.
Pastor-in-charge of Trinity House, Pastor Ituah Ighodalo, who did the holy ritual at the proposed site, called on the government to create the right environment for businesses to thrive.
“This big investment is timely, geared to respond to the rising need of cancer prevention and treatment. COVID-19 pandemic has shown that we need more projects like this, which will stem health tourism. Cancer is one of the quick killer diseases, so government should strive to establish health care zones for the people,” Nwosu said.