Elim City builds cancer centre in Sunyani
Elim City Church, a Pentecostal church in Sunyani, has built a cancer support centre in the Brong Ahafo Region.
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According to the Head Pastor of the church, Rev. Dr Gospel Odame-Kentor, the project was a way of giving back to society for helping to uplift his status.
Homecoming
The head pastor said having sojourned abroad for the past 15 years, he and his wife, Bene, decided to come back home to the region to change lives for the better through the gospel and other social interventions.
Rev. Dr Odame-Kentor said his checks revealed that the Brong Ahafo Region lacked a facility for diseases such as cancer, hence the establishment of the cancer support centre in Sunyani.
Hitherto, patients who reported at the regional hospital with cancer-related cases were referred to the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi for treatment. The centre, he said, would, therefore, have equipment and experts to attend to patients on a weekly basis for a start and then go into full-time operation.
Inauguration
inaugurating the project, a Medical Officer at the Owusu Memorial Hospital in Sunyani, Dr Collins Kofi Oparku, indicated that there were over 100 different types of cancer and each was classified by the cell that was initially affected.
He disclosed that the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that there were four million new cancer cases and 8.2 million cancer-related deaths, according to its 2012 report.
Dr Oparku enumerated anal, breast, cervical, prostrate and bone cancers as some common ones suffered by Ghanaians.
Early detection
He said early detection was the best remedy for all cancer-related diseases and urged the general public to avail themselves of regular screening to avoid complications and untimely deaths.
Dr Oparku appealed to benevolent individuals, groups, corporate bodies and policy makers, especially those in the Brong Ahafo Region, to contribute meaningfully to the cancer support fund to make the project fruitful and successful.