Ministry of Health committed to producing action plan

The Ministry of Health and Wellness hope to have the National Cancer Action Plan ratified and shared as soon as possible.

Word of this came from Dr. Arthur Phillips, Senior Medical Officer of Health (NCDs), Ministry of Health and Wellness, as he delivered remarks during the Barbados National Registry’s Annual CME Seminar Series titled “Reversing the Trend of Late Stage Cancer”, that took place recently at the University of the West Indies, Cave School of Business.

“We are all aware that cancer is negatively affecting Barbados, and PAHO in their country report lists cancer as the second leading cause of death in Barbados. And so The Ministry of Health and Wellness is committed to have the National Cancer Action Plan ratified and shared as we believe that this will provide guidance in achieving the reduction of cancer deaths and improvement in survival,” he said.

He revealed that over the last 10 years the BNR had been collecting data on behalf of the Ministry of Health and Wellness and according to a recently published report by the BNR the mortality rate for Barbados stands at 149 per 100 000 population compared to the global rate of 85 per 100 000.

He noted that this data was concerning, and as such, seminars such as the one hosted by the BNR proved extremely beneficial as it gave practitioners the opportunity to discuss in their various roles, various suggestions on how to reverse late stage cancer.
According to Shelly-Ann Forde, Registrar at the BNR, the top cancers remained very similar over the past couple of reports, with prostate cancer being number one, followed by breast and colon cancer.

“Over the past three years it has remained that 50 per cent of those people who have been diagnosed with cancer will be deceased in three years,” she said.

“In addition to that, we are talking about staging because staging affects not only the prognosis and treatment but also the outcome for persons with cancer and as mentioned before stage refers to the extent of disease in diagnosis and 50 per cent or more of cancer patients across the different cancer sites are being diagnosed with regional to distant metastasis which means that is a little harder to treat and therefore we want to put things in place and come up with strategies to how we can reverse that trend.”