The 27th episode of the “Imran” program dealt with the reality of cancer patients in Sudan, and highlighted their suffering at the therapeutic and financial levels, the absence of government support and lack of hospitals specialized in the treatment of tumors.
Amer highlights among cancer patients, as he suffers from a tumor in the head that causes him completely paralysis, and is subject to treatment sessions, but without any improvement in his condition after 29 consecutive sessions.
The child’s mother says that she suffered the two things on a journey to diagnose her cancer -infection child, and his passage of several doctors, noting that he was unable to move his limbs within two months.
She recovered the condition of her son, as he was playing normally and going to the mosque, then he was paralyzed gradually, but his condition deteriorated more after the failure to obtain a quick reservation with the doctor.
She explained that her child was walking on one foot and then losing completely the ability to walk, leading to his complaint of head pain, which later led to his inability to raise his head.
Regarding how to know his cancer, the mother said that the image of the rays showed a tumor in the brain, after which he was subjected to treatment sessions after it was not possible to perform the operation in Meroe Cancer Hospital.
Amer is 10 years old, and he is in the second row, and he wishes the soul to become a teacher of the Arabic language when he grows up, according to his conversation with the presenter of the program, the gold bracelet.
Torment
In turn, an old man said that he came from the far north of Darfur, and traveled a long distance to reach Meroe, in the north of the country, in a journey that took 6 full days.
According to his speech, cancer patients and their families come from distant areas to Meroe for the purpose of treatment, on a journey that may take a year and a half, forcing them to stay under the trees and sharing them.
He explained that the people prefer to stay under the trees due to the high cost of rent in Meroe, in addition to that the costs of rent and treatment cannot be affected at the same time.
The only Meroe Hospital is a specialist in the treatment of chronic diseases, but its absorptive capacity does not enable him to treat this number of patients from all over the country.
Because of the war, the two large oncology centers were closed in Khartoum Wood Madani, the capital of the southern state of Al -Jazeera, and only a single radiotherapy device left in Meroe Hospital in northern Sudan.
The episode shed light on a third case, returning to a child from the outskirts of El Fasher, as he suffers from food from his stomach for 5 months, and doctors believed that he had stomach pain, before his cancer was discovered.
There is no recent statistic for the numbers of cancer patients in Sudan, and the latest statistic – issued by the Ministry of Health in August 2022 – indicated that there are 20 thousand cases of active disease in the disease, 8% of which are for children.
Sudanese doctors warn that “the limited access to oncology services during the current war exposes the lives of more than 40,000 Sudanese patients with cancer.”