Expert says breastfeeding can prevent cancer

Dr Mauris Nimark, Senior Registrar, Department of Oncology and Radiotherapy, National Hospital, Abuja, said on Monday that breastfeeding could prevent the development of breast cancer in women.

Nimark disclosed this at a two-day retreat on 'Prevention and Treatment of Cancer, Hepatitis and Typhoid,' organised for Management Staff of the Tertiary Education Fund (TETFUND) in Abuja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that A.I. Global Concept Ltd. in collaboration with the Corporate Medicals organised the retreat.

Nimark said women between 30 years and 40 years of age may likely contract breast cancer, explaining that at that age they were due to breastfeed.

"Breast feeding has been discovered to be protective towards development of breast cancer. So, women that breast feed reduce the risk than those that never breast feed.

"Generally, cancer is a disease that forms abnormal and uncontrolled growth within and outside the human body,’’ he said.

Nimark urged the participants to always go for cancer screening before the ailment got out of prevention and treatment.

According to him, participants should avoid tobacco, alcohol and processed food such as can foods in order to prevent cancer diseases.

"Regular exercise helps in controlling diseases such as hypertension, high blood pressure and cancers because when you are fit, you will be able to fight the diseases,” he said.

Alhaji Abdullahi Ibrahim, the Managing Director, A.I. Global Concept Ltd., a Human Resources/Medical Consultancy Firm, urged the Federal Government to urgently react positively to the needs of nation’s hospitals.

Ibrahim said the government should provide necessary and sufficient equipment to detect and drug to fight cancer scourge affecting women in the society.

He said it is regrettable to note that machines used to diagnose and treat cancer patients are virtually non-existent as most hospitals do not have functional machines.

He said that news report has it that the only one functioning is in Abuja, adding that patients are too many to cope with large number of patients.

Ibrahim said hepatitis became rampant in the country due to lack of awareness on causes of the ailment.

He stressed the need to overhaul the nation’s health-care delivery system to avoid epidemic in cancer and hepatitis ailments in the Nigerian society.

According to him, government should take the fight against corruption to procurement process of equipment for detection and treatment of ailments in order to succeed in the nation’s health-care reform.

"Government should ensure that right equipment for detection and treatment are procured at reasonable cost and as well as distributed to all our tertiary health institutions.’’