How cancer patients will feel pain of strike from disrupted therapy

Florah Ndunge is transferred to Texas Cancer Center, Nairobi, to undergo chemotherapy on December 7, 2016. Cancer patients in the country have turned to private hospitals for treatment following Doctor and Nurses national wide strike that has entered its third day. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE

What you need to know:

  • Even when the treatments resume, there is bound to be chaos because for each of the days there are different patients.
  • Last Tuesday, Kenya Cancer Association (Kencasa) housed within KNH compound, raised the alarm about patients skipping their sessions.
  • Aware that the cost of a chemotherapy session is as high as Sh14,000 it will be utterly disturbing to have a patient restart the cycle as the burden which is already very heavy, will become unbearable.

At the height of the doctors’ strike in Kenya, Anne Kabuchi could not answer when asked “how are you?”

There was an explanation for this silence: on top of the agony that comes with a missing breast thanks to a surgery due to breast cancer, she had to worry that she may discontinue her chemotherapy due to the ongoing doctors’ strike. The strike threatens the outcomes of terminally ill patients. Oncologist, Dr Catherine Nyongesa, said of the interruption: “Just like you should not discontinue your ARV treatment if you have HIV, or antibiotics for an infectious disease, it is not in the best interest of cancer patients to discontinue or interrupt their sessions.”

A clandestine spot check at the ward, GFC in KNH, where chemotherapy sessions take place on Wednesdays and Fridays show empty seats and corridors echo every footstep during the first week of the strike. A week later, and by the time Healthy Nation was going to press, chemotherapy had not resumed.

Even when the treatments resume, there is bound to be chaos because for each of the days there are different patients.

EXPENSIVE ALTERNATIVES

Anne held her receipts at Kenyatta National Hospital as she talked to Healthy Nation. She is one of the more than 3,000 new cancer patients beginning treatment each year at the hospital.

She says she has spent colossal amounts of money for her mastectomy that has seen her wear a pad on one of her breasts and she is upset that “the strike took place when I only had two sessions left”.

She was scheduled for a session the Friday that the strike began.

“NHIF pays for any drug that KNH may have, but if the drugs are not there as is usually the case, I have to buy from without the facility and that …” she pulls her receipts to show it “costs me a lot of money”. The receipt is marked October 18 and she had paid Sh12,500 for two drugs familiar with breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy: Docetaxel and Docax.  She had come for her usual blood tests which costs her Sh1,500 but she was told to go back home and “watch the news to know when the doctors will be back”.

Anne told Healthy Nation that words can only approximate the feeling when her body was attacked, and now she has to worry about the potential health risks that this interruption may bring her.

Healthy Nation followed her to Texas Cancer Centre where she went to inquire about an alternative source of treatment.

Last Tuesday, Kenya Cancer Association (Kencasa) housed within KNH compound, raised the alarm about patients skipping their sessions.

Kencasa executive director Deborah Modi had written to Nation thus: “The situation is further worrying because missed chemotherapy sessions may mean that a patient may have to restart the cycle or have delayed treatment which may cause worsening of the situation and increased complications. Aware that the cost of a chemotherapy session is as high as Sh14,000 it will be utterly disturbing to have a patient restart the cycle as the burden which is already very heavy, will become unbearable.”