Cancer awareness

Oct 30, 2025 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – As the curtains draw on the month set aside for heightening our collective awareness of cancer, we in this country must pause and urgently take stock of where we stand in this grim battle.

Cancer is no ordinary enemy. It does not discriminate. It creeps into brain or breast, colon or lung, prostate or cervix, with the same cruel certainty. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reminds us plainly: cancers are one of the leading causes of death in the Region of the Americas.

Preventive measure, adjusting our lifestyle, adopting healthy habits can avert around 40 per cent of cancers. Even more stark: about one-third of cancers are diagnosable at early stages through screening and detection programmes. The message is laid bare: prevention, early detection, treatment, these must form the pillars of our response.

And yet, here at home, we are floundering. According to reports from the Ministry of Health Cancer Registry, cases surged by 38 per cent in 2023 compared with 2022. Deaths jumped from 443 in 2022 to 612 in 2023. Screening for breast, prostate, cervix and colorectal cancers is happening, but seemingly too late, too infrequently. The pattern emerges: people wait until symptoms shout at them; diagnosis arrives at too advanced a stage; treatment becomes more a desperate scramble than a sure path to cure.

The realities are unpalatable. The cost of cancer care is staggering: tests in the tens of thousands; chemotherapy cycles tallying hundreds of thousands; radiation regimes demanding repeated, distressing visits and mounting bills. The here-and-now scenario is this: for the well-heeled, options exist—treatment abroad, access to private care. For the less fortunate, it is an ordeal by fire: agonising, drawn-out, often silent. Too many are dying. Too many watch the slow decline within four bare walls.

The government has made some moves. The Ministry of Health has set aside funds and introduced vouchers for screening and testing. These are welcome steps, but they are far from enough. Yes, prevention and early detection are cheaper than end-stage treatment, but the initial hurdles, the cost, the travel, the fear, the stigma are still towering. The structure is too weak. The effort insufficient.

We cannot continue to treat cancer as though it were just another illness. The data from PAHO show that in the Region of the Americas, death and disability from malignant neoplasms amount to over 1.4 million deaths. The burden is rising even as some countries manage to reduce age-standardised mortality, simply because population growth and ageing increase the sheer numbers. Here in Guyana, the rise is already in stark detail. We must demand higher priority, sharper focus, and more urgency.

We see the numbers. We hear the stories. The well-to-do among us will find a way abroad; the rest are left behind in quiet suffering. That discrepancy cannot stand. We cannot permit that healthcare outcome depends on one’s wallet or ZIP code. As the month of awareness ends, the work must begin in earnest. This is not a run-of-the-mill sickness. To treat it as if it were is a disservice to the thousands of lives at stake. We owe it to every father, mother, sibling and child who watches a family member suffer.

Call and action must come. Now. Let us stare into the unflinching truth: too many are dying, too many are left alone in agony, simply because the system did not match the disease’s wrath. We must change that. We must raise our collective voice, demand better, insist on results, and refuse to to let cancer’s hostile reach sweep our nation without resistance. Let this month of awareness be the spark for sustained, national, uncompromising action.

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cancer, Cancer awareness, Editorial, PAHO

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