While Covid-19 rages, Big C is waiting to pounce, forum told

 

There is almost no screening of lung cancer patients now as most are in hiding because they fear becoming exposed to the Covid-19 virus, says Azrul Mohd Khalib, the CEO of the Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy. (Bernama pic)

PETALING JAYA: While the Covid-19 pandemic rages and all healthcare resources are used to fight it, the other Big C is just waiting in the wings, ready to become a huge problem in a few years.

“We won’t see the impact now, but it will be there in a couple of years. Cancer patients will be coming in with Stage 3 and Stage 4, and what are we going to do with them?” asked the head of a health think tank at an online forum on lung cancer today,

“That will be the question in the next two or three years… And it’s likely that very little can be done for them,” said Azrul Mohd Khalib, CEO of the Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy.

Azrul said Covid-19 has prevented cancer patients from being treated earlier and more effectively – especially since high-risk groups, such as cancer patients, are especially fearful about exposing themselves to the virus.

According to the Malaysian Study on Cancer Survival (MySCan) released in 2018, lung cancer patients had the lowest survival rate of any cancer in Malaysia with a median survival time (MST) of 6.8 months – largely due to late diagnoses.

Azrul Mohd Khalib.

Azrul was speaking at a webinar organised by the National Cancer Society Malaysia (NCSM) titled ‘No Patient Left Behind: Improving Lung Cancer Care in Malaysia during Covid-19’.

NCSM’s managing director Dr Murallitharan Munisamy agreed with Azrul, noting that Malaysia is set to see a lot of late lung cancer diagnoses for the next “three to four years”.

“People need to get checked when they begin to observe symptoms such as losing weight,” said Murallitharan.

“But many hospitals have just shut off screening services. There were pockets of screenings starting to come back before (Covid-19) daily cases were more than 20,000 … now, they are hiding again in the deep, dark corners.”

Azrul noted how many Malaysians were not necessarily familiar with the early symptoms of cancer, which is partly due to a lack of health literacy – or the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.

“You can see that when the Covid-19 pandemic started… and how the public had to be educated about it,” he said.

“When you talk about cancer, you have to see how the population can prevent it and how they can adopt behavioural changes, which anyone working in public health will tell you, is very hard to achieve.

“People need to be more aware of (cancer) symptoms and what they should do.” - FMT