By Ojo Oluwafemi
The Wife of Ondo State Governor, Mrs Betty Akeredolu, has blamed religious organisations for the high rate of deaths recorded from cancer, due to spiritual ‘healings’ despite aggressive awareness and sensitization campaigns done by NGOs dealing with cancer advocacy.
Mrs Akeredolu disclosed this on Wednesday at the Inter School Arts Competition for selected secondary schools in Ibadan, the Oyo state capital.
The governor’s wife, who is also the Founder of Breast Cancer Association of Nigeria (BRECAN) said the activities of most religious organisations have become worrisome.
She said that most women died out of ignorance, blaming them for approaching spiritual places like churches and mosques for automatic ‘miracles’.
“I am kind of demoralised that even at BRECAN head office in Ibadan, our women are still presenting their cases late because they keep going to these churches even when we have UCH right here.
They just continue messing up our efforts.
“The ‘man’ and ‘woman of God’ will run away immediately they notice the breast get rotten, knowing fully well they can’t control the situation any longer.
“Let our women listen, breast cancer is the easiest cancer you can handle these days due to the amount of research that has gone into it.
“Breast is external, check it, go to hospital and stop parading miracle mountains. It has to stop in this country because I feel angry talking about late presentation in this country.
“Cervical cancer is 100 percent preventable, we cannot use the word prevention for breast cancer, but we can stand on our feet and say cervical cancer is very preventable and one of the ways is allow young children have HPV vaccination to prevent sexually transmitted infections.
“It is good for us to start preventing cervical cancer very early so let’s embrace the ways and tools available through proper awareness, which remains a powerful tool.
“I have never seen anyone in my 24 years of advocacy against breast cancer who visited miracle mountains and other spiritual means and got cured.
They always finally ended up in the hospital after the breast had become irredeemably damaged,” She said.
Mrs Akeredolu said she was extremely elated at the pace of BRECAN development, and recalled how BRECAN started 24 years ago where nobody wanted to associate with her, probably because of the name cancer.
She further stressed that the Inter-School Arts competition was targeted at creating awareness in the young ones through which their parents would be enlightened and give their consent to the cervical cancer vaccination.
The Chairperson of Oyo state chapter of BRECAN, Mrs.Tolu Taiwo, said that the competition was another means of passing awareness Information about the disease to the world to see.
Mrs Taiwo said that Oyo BRECAN aims at introducing breast cancer campaign by engaging the young ones in secondary schools through their skills in arts and which they really demonstrated at the competition.
NAN also reports that the first three winners were given cash gifts and certificates of participation by BRECAN.
