Thursday, June 24, 2010

Expanding radiotherapy centres to boost cancer treatment

Article: Salome Donkor
THE word ‘cancer’ evokes desperation that stirs grief and pain, a scourge that strains intellectual, social and emotional resources.
Statistics from the World Health Organisation (WHO) indicate that there are over 20 million people living with cancer in the world today, with the majority in the developing world.
According to medical experts, cancer, which is the term used for diseases in which abnormal cells divide without control and invade other tissues, is one of the killer diseases among both men and women.
Each cancer is thought to first start from one abnormal cell. What seems to happen is that certain vital genes which control how cells divide and multiply are damaged or altered. This makes the cell abnormal. If the abnormal cell survives, it may multiply “out of control” into a malignant tumour, which consists of cancer cells that have the ability to spread beyond the original area.
Dr Clegg Lamptey of the Surgical Department of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra says cancer affects various parts of the body, which results in various types of cancers, each with its own name and its treatment.
Some types of cancers that affect parts of the body are breast, lung, stomach, skin, cervical and prostate cancers. Doctors say cancers in children can affect any part of their bodies. Leukaemia is a type of cancer that starts in blood-forming tissues such as the bone marrow and causes the production of large numbers of abnormal blood cells which enter the blood.
Given the complex nature of the disease, early detection of cancer is crucial for effective treatment and such detection is almost impossible without the requisite equipment and trained personnel.
Doctors contend that irrespective of the type of cancer a patient develops, he or she may need one of the following processes — surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormonal therapy — and that usually patients who have prostate and breast cancers go through hormonal therapy.
For this reason, the news that Ghana has secured $13.5 million loan from the OPEC Fund and the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa to upgrade and expand the radiotherapy centres at the Korle Bu and Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Accra and Kumasi respectively could be described as a positive step to enhance the care and treatment of cancer cases in the country.
The story published in the Daily Graphic early April, quoted the Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, Ms Sherry Ayittey, as stating in an interview that another $9 million dollars was being sourced to establish a new radiotherapy centre at the Tamale Teaching Hospital to serve the northern part of the country and neighbouring West African countries not having radiotherapy facilities.
She said the projects were being undertaken in line with the government’s determination to ensure that cancer cases received prompt attention at the country’s two teaching hospitals.
Ms Ayittey said upgrading and expanding the two centres would enhance the care and treatment of cancer cases in the country and ensure that cases which were hitherto referred to hospitals outside the countries were treated locally.
Doctors say cancer could be cured when detected early, and that cancers needed multi-disciplinary treatment with various specialists. However, if left untreated, it may spread and destroy surrounding tissues.
Radiotherapy is an important means of treating cancers and most cancer patients go through this treatment. According to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, radiotherapy is used for the treatment of malignant cancer, and may be used as a primary or adjuvant modality. It is also common to combine radiotherapy with surgery, chemotherapy, hormone therapy or the mixture of the three. Most common cancer types can be treated with radiotherapy in some way. The precise treatment intent (curative, adjuvant, neoadjuvant, therapeutic, or palliative) will depend on the tumour type, location, and stage, as well as the general health of the patient.
Radiation therapy is commonly applied to the cancerous tumour. The radiation fields may also include the draining lymph nodes, if they are clinically or radiologically involved with tumour, or if it is thought there is the risk of subclinical malignant spread. It is necessary to include a margin of normal tissue around the tumour to allow for uncertainties in daily set-up and internal tumour motion. These uncertainties can be caused by internal movement (for example, respiration and bladder filling) and movement of external skin marks relative to the tumour position.
To spare normal tissues (such as skin or organs which radiation must pass through in order to treat the tumour), shaped radiation beams are aimed from several angles of exposure to intersect at the tumour, providing a much larger absorbed dose there than in the surrounding, healthy tissue.
Lack of knowledge of the disease and the cost of treatment makes it difficult for most cancer patients to bear the cost of surgery and treatment. For that reason, some patients seek support from herbalists and pastors, instead of visiting the health facility.
Mrs Gladys Boateng, Director, Reach for Recovery, a breast cancer support group, said because of the stigmatisation, myth and fear surrounding the disease, nobody wanted to be associated with it, stressing that that was affecting the fight against the disease.
There is therefore the need for a concerted effort and intensive education to highlight the world-wide growing cancer crisis and its effect on women in particular. There is the need for counselling and other support.
It is also necessary to demystify cancer to disabuse the minds of patients of the fear, misconception and myths surrounding the disease and encourage patients to go for regular, medical examination.
The survivors are encouraged to participate in stress-relieving trips and also take active roles in visiting one another.
According to Mrs Boateng, another important aspect of cancer treatment was the need to establish a hospice for terminally ill cancer patients for proper care and support and pointed out that support groups, such as Reach for Recovery, needed to be offered the maximum support to continue their good works.

Dealing with gender stereotypes -

Article: Salome Donkor
Inequalities between men and women, whether in the economic or cultural sense or both, certainly mean that women work hardest to produce food and water, yet benefit the least from their work.
This is because women have less power over the resources they produce.
Gender inequality impacts on access to food, property and land rights, as well as access to credit.
The World Development Indicators, 1997, Womankind World-wide, indicate that women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours, produce half of the world’s food and yet earn only 10 per cent of the world’s income and own less than one per cent of the world’s property.
To promote the EC/UN Partnership Programme on gender Equality for Development and Peace, the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), under the auspices and sponsorship of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), recently organised a two-day forum to share experiences and exchange views with media practitioners on practices and principles for promoting gender equality as a priority development issue.
The forum discussed the Accra Agenda for Action endorsed by ministers of developing and donor countries responsible for development and heads of multilateral and bilateral development institutions, after the Third High level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Accra from September 2-4, 2008.
The document provides the framework for promoting gender equality and also provides UNIFEM with a platform to introduce its new programme for 2010 - 2013.
According to the National Programme Co-ordinator of UNIFEM, the Proposed New Programme on Financing Gender Equality and Aid Effectiveness, Programme Country Strategy, developed after the adoption of the action programme, would address four key gaps and challenges in the country.
She mentioned the need for capacity building or the strengthening of key government institutions on their roles and functions in the implementation of the national gender equality agenda, the need to strengthen gender equality and the role of civil society organisations and non-governmental organisations in monitoring and evaluating government and donors’ commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment agenda in national development plans, budgets and development co-operation frameworks.
It will also address issues associated with limited progress on mutual accountability of governments and donors, as well as the lack of relevant gender desegregated data and information on financing for gender equality, costing of gender equality and women empowerment programmes and gender responsive budgeting implementation in the country.
In identifying the main activities that will be carried out and the programme partners to achieve the expected results, UNIFEM mentions ministries, departments and agencies, United Nations agencies and other multilateral, as well as bilateral, agencies, the private sector and the media.
One important way in which the media can deal with gender inequalities is to publish stories that challenge stereotypes and these include those that overturn common assumptions about women and men in relation to their attributes, traits, roles or occupations.
Conversely, stories that reinforce stereotypes will reinscribe the generalised, simplistic and often exaggerated assumptions of masculinity and femininity in a given cultural context.
The preliminary report by the Global Media Monitoring Project, 2010, states that stories in Asia are almost eight times as likely to reinforce gender stereotypes than to challenge them.
It said in Africa, stories were almost 16 times as likely to reinforce than challenge stereotypes, adding that the larger percentage of stories that reinforced rather than challenged stereotypes suggested a need for media practitioner awareness on understanding, recognising and challenging stereotypes in reportage.
The top five topics in which women are central pertain to women in politics, violence and crime. Specifically, these are women in political power and decision-making, gender-based violence, violent crime, domestic politics and disaster. Further, the preliminary results show that women are not central at all in several news topics that are of importance to them, such as labour (employment, unemployment) and poverty (housing, social welfare and aid).
The report shows that the breakdown of topics with the highest coverage in all regions indicates that the media in Africa devoted 25 per cent of news coverage for politics and government, 21 per cent for social and legal, 19 per cent for the economy, 18 per cent for crime and violence, nine per cent for science and health,, six per cent for celebrity, the arts and the media and sports and zero per cent for the girl-child.
The hierarchy of priorities reveals the need for a radical transformation of the news media agenda towards one that is cognisant of and responsive to gender interests in the news.
The topics, ‘science and health’ and ‘social and legal’, are relevant to women’s gender interest. What is needed is a re-alignment of the priorities on the news media agenda to reflect the interest of the majority.
The most significant of participants’ commitment at the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness was their resolve to work together to help countries across the world build a successful future for all, a future based on a shared commitment to overcome poverty, a future in which no countries will depend on aid.
The participants agreed that by 2010, each of them should meet the commitments they had made on aid effectiveness in Paris in 2005 and in Accra and reach beyond those commitments, where they could.
They agreed to reflect and draw upon the many valuable ideas and initiatives that had been presented at the High Level Forum and asked the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness to continue monitoring progress on implementing the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action and report back to the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in 2011.
As was rightly pointed out by Dr Doris Dartey, a communications consultant and media educator, the media should not reinforce gender stereotypes or publish gender-blind stories.
There is the need for media practitioners to set their personal agendas and use the media to get people to tell their stories.
That should be done in such a way to champion cultural change, safeguard women’s rights and shine “the dark spots in society”.

Women Candidates Support Package is laudable

Article: Salome Donkor
The important role of women in politics and public office is recognised within the framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). One of the indicators for monitoring MDG 3 that relates to promoting gender equality and women empowerment, is the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments and other levels of decision-making process.
The 2005 World Summit Outcome reaffirmed the commitment to increase representation of women in government and decision-making bodies, including opportunities to participate fully in the political process.
Marked progress has been made since 1995 in the numbers of women elected to national parliaments and statistics from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) database on women in national parliaments indicate that 20 countries achieved over 30 per cent representation of women in 2006, which compares favourably with the very short list of five countries that had achieved this in 1995 (Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden).
The IPU database indicates that almost all of the 20 countries have used some form of electoral quotas to ensure that women account for a certain number of percentage of candidates for office or officeholders, whether through a constitutional commitment, a provision of election legislation, voluntary action by political parties, or some combination of these.
Two articles of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) deal with women’s participation in political and public life. Article 7 commits States parties to ensure equality between women and men in political and public life, including the right to vote, to be eligible for election, to participate in formulating government policy, to hold public office and to perform public functions. That provision also includes the right to participate in non-governmental organisations and other associations.
Article 8 requires States parties to ensure that women have equal opportunities with men to represent their governments at the international level and to participate in the work of international organisations. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women provided additional guidance in the implementation of the Convention in 1997 in its General Recommendation 23, which highlighted the application of the Convention to all levels of government and to the activities of a range of organisations concerned with public and political life, including public boards, local councils, and the activities of political parties, trade unions and professional associations.
The involvement of more women in politics and decision-making is significant, since it is expected to meet their interests and basic needs and enable them to continue to influence policies from a gender perspective and address inequalities and injustices in social relationships. The full participation of women in the electoral process was also key to the growth of democracy.
The local government system has therefore become good grounds for some women who want to enter national politics. But there are various challenges that confront women intending to enter local government, which make it difficult for them to take the initiative.
To address these challenges, which include social and economic factors, the Department of Women in the various regions have been tasked to work in collaboration with the district assemblies and identify 20 women from each district to support them to take part in the forthcoming district assembly elections.
This month, the Electoral Commission (EC) also announced a package to encourage more women to contest the upcoming district level elections scheduled for October 26, this year.
Known as The Women Candidates Support Package, it is set to be introduced in recognition of the peculiar challenge women faced, with financial support from the European Union, and it will include training workshops to be attended solely by female candidates.
In 2005, with the support of the Democratic Governance Thematic Trust Fund (DGTTF), the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), the EC and the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs undertook intensive leadership training programmes for potential women candidates for the 2006 district level elections.
In addition to this, the Women in Local Government Fund was also launched to support female contestants. Despite these, the low numbers of women in local and national politics means that it is also important to look at other methods, such as quota representation, to bridge the gap between the numbers of men and women represented in the political arena.
Ms Gloria Ofori Buadu, President of the Women Assistance Business Association (WABA), an organisation that supports women, described the EC’s initiative as a good idea but stated that there was the need to repackage these programmes well in order not to incur the displeasure of other contestants in the local elections.
She said in the last elections some male contestants used the raising of funds to support female candidates, to campaign against the women, with some of them alleging that the female candidates had been given a lot of money, while their male counterparts had none.
She also advised the EC to stick to the date fixed for the election and said in the last election, a number of the electorate lost interest in the polls as a result of the change in dates.
Some women contacted said the details of the EC’s package should be spelt out and made known to prospective contestants, to help them derive maximum benefit from the scheme, to significantly improve gender balance in decision-making at all levels.

Children count - Make the commitment

Article: Salome Donkor
TO many parents and those who have the interest of children at heart,"every day is Children's Day". The World Conference for the Well-being of Children in Geneva, Switzerland proclaimed June 1 as International Children's Day in 1925 to promote the well-being of children around the world. This followed resolutions taken at the World Conference in Geneva, Switzerland that year.
On this day, the whole world observes the need to reach out to the youngest members of our world community. Each year in commemoration of International Children's Day, Amnesty International calls on the international community to take concrete steps to protect and promote children's rights, which are the foundation for a thriving human rights culture.
It is not clear as to why June 1 was chosen as the International Children's Day: One theory has it that the Chinese consul-general in San Francisco (USA) gathered a number of Chinese orphans to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival in 1925, which happened to be on June 1 that year, and also coincided with the conference in Geneva.
The day, celebrated as a holiday in some countries, is usually marked with speeches on children's rights and well-being, children TV programmes, parties, various activities involving or dedicated to children, with some families going out with their children. Many nations declare days for children on other dates.
In the United States of America, Children’s Day observations predate both Mothers’ and Fathers’ Day, though a permanent annual single Children's Day observation is not made at the national level.
The celebration of a special Children’s Day in America dates from the 1860s and earlier.
In 1856, Rev. Charles H. Leonard, then pastor of the First Universalist Church of Chelsea, Mass., set apart a Sunday for the dedication of children to the Christian life, and for the re-dedication of parents and guardians to bringing-up their children in Christian nurture. This service was first observed the second Sunday in June.
In Ghana, similar programmes are held in some churches such as the Presbyterian and Methodist that mark Children’s day with drama, Bible recitals, and talk on children’s rights and development. Such programmes are also used to raise funds in support the Children’s Ministry of those churches.
To mark the 20th, 50th and 60th anniversaries of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the Geneva Conventions, respectively, the International Committee of the Red Cross has issued a new brochure on children and war. This brochure examines the risks faced by children caught up in armed conflict, the steps taken to address their specific needs and the rules of law defined to protect them.
Much was not heard about this year’s International Children’s Day celebration in the country, but one significant programme held in Accra on Saturday June 5, that is also related to the promotion of child’s rights, was the launch of the 2010 World Day Against Child Labour and the current International Labour Organisation (ILO) Child Labour Global Report.
The worst forms of child labour as defined in the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention No. 182 included practices such as the sale and trafficking of children, serfdom and forced or compulsory labour including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict, the use, procuring or offering of children for prostitution, or for the production of pornography or pornographic performance: And the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs.
Some people contend that there is no child labour in the country,arguing that children who help their parents to raise money
for the upkeep of the family are not engaged in child labour. However, the 2003 Ghana Child Labour Survey (GCLS 2003), revealed that 2.47 million children out of an estimated number of 6.36 million aged between 5 and 17, were economically active, with about 1.27 million in activities classified as child labour.
Speaking at the programme, the Deputy Commissioner of the Commission of Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Ms Anna Bossman, was reported to have stated that child labour continued to pose problems that resulted in child abuse and hindered the growth and development of children in developing countries.
A communiqué adopted by participants after the six-day forum at the recent annual Easter School for Children in Sunyani, organised by Child's Rights International (CRI) in co-operation with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), urged the Department of Social Welfare to monitor the activities of children and called on the Department of Social Welfare, Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) and Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC),to institute programmes to tackle the problems of child labour and early marriages involving children.
This was based on their observations and findings during different field trips to the Techiman Market, various houses, shops and drinking bars to distribute 250 copies of the Children’s Act 560. The visit to the Techiman Market revealed that, although the day of the visit was not a market day, there were many children at the market carrying loads of food items.
The communiqué indicated that majority of the children, aged between six and 17 started selling at the age of six, with some of them ‘working’ permanently for the whole week for approximately 10 hours a day, while those working temporarily, ‘work’ five days a week, earning between GH¢1 and GH¢20, with some earning as low as 50 Ghana pesewas a day.
It said most of the children, who were malnourished, lived in rented kiosks and stores, and take unprescribed drugs to ease their body pains, and some were knocked down by vehicles without any compensation.
Recognising the need to respond to the health, education, safety, and social and emotional well-being of children, countries that joined the world community in observing International Children's Day renewed their commitment to improving the lives of children around the world.
Ghana, as well as the global community in general need to commit herself to promoting access to a quality education for all children,strive to improve the lives of young people by seeking innovative solutions to poverty,including programmes that provide emergency relief, promote economic opportunity and integrate human rights concerns into humanitarian assistance.
As a parent/guardian, we need to commit ourselves to love, cherish and nurture our children physically, mentally,emotionally, attend to their spiritual needs and affirm our love to them. All adults have the responsibility to make the world a better place for children.