Kenya’s new silent killer

If you told most Kenyans that the food on their plate could cut their lifespan by at least 10 years, you might be dismissed with a hearty laugh.

Food and survival are intimately entwined in most developing nations. But Kenyans might be shocked to learn that 40 per cent of all cancers may be caused by choice of diet.

In fact, epidemiologists who study the prevalence of cancer worldwide have concluded that the chance of dying of cancer today are higher than the risk of contracting HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined, compared to those risks just 20 years ago.

That assessment may seem shocking, even overly exaggerated. But there is no denying a growing body of research from developed nations that certain fruits and vegetables which could hold the key to battling the dreaded disease are steadily disappearing from Kenyan dining tables.

Add a sedentary lifestyle and the picture gets even grimmer. The lift to the second floor instead of the stairs, the boda boda ride home instead of a walk, or the bag of potato chips instead of good old ugali may be trendy, but far from healthy.

And as the silent killer slowly gnaws at society, the government remains in the dark over the prevalence rate, for Kenya does not have a national cancer registry.

The only available reference is a data base run by the Kenya Medical Research Institute, and it only holds information from the main hospitals in Nairobi from the years 2000 to 2002.

What many do not know is that cancer is now the Number Three killer in the country, with an estimated 18,000 deaths reported annually and 82,000 infections diagnosed every year.

Head and neck cancers make up the largest proportion of reported male infections, at about 14.8 per cent, while cancer of the oesophagus takes the overall lead across the genders, followed by prostate and stomach infections.

Women, on the other hand, suffer most from breast cancer, followed by uterine cervix, head, neck, oesophagus, and stomach cancers, in that order. Others include Kaposi’s sarcoma, skin cancer associated with HIV, liver cancer, and colon cancer.

The World Health Organisation estimates that cancer rates could increase by 50 per cent to 15 million new cases by the year 2020, and advises that healthy lifestyles and public health action by governments and health practitioners could stem this trend and prevent as many as one third of cancers worldwide.

The best way to do this, researchers say, is through diet. And researchers have found that anti-carcinogens found in most fruits suppress the incidence of prostate cancer by up to 50 per cent.

“The tomato fruit, in all its forms — cooked, raw, pureed in tins, or processed into a sauce — is a powerful anti-oxidant and should be consumed by everyone in vast quantities. It is also cheap and freely available,” says Prof Walter Willet, a US researcher.

Garlic and onion have chemicals that stimulate the production of enzymes that neutralise cancer-producing cells.

At high risk

And if your lifestyle involves little exercise, eating high quantities of red meat, regular consumption of alcohol, and smoking, you are at a high risk of contracting colon cancer, Dr Jana Macleod, head of the Department of Surgery at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Nairobi, warns.

The good news is that, through early detection, cancer is no longer the death sentence that it used to be. Even though Kenya today has only two public hospitals that offer diagnostic services — Kenyatta National Hospital and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret — their services are augmented by a host of other private hospitals spread across the country.

These may not yet have cracked the mystery that is this disease, but they have managed, in a big way, to control its effects on patients. Cancer occurs when there is a mutation of a person’s DNA, resulting in an abnormal growth of cells.

The most worrying fact is that lifestyle choices are today the biggest contributors to the national cancer pool, and there is every indication that a concerted effort by both the medical fraternity and the general public could stem the spread of the silent killer.

Mr Newton Siele, chairman of the Kenya Cancer Association, says a national call for all Kenyans to watch what they eat, combined with public health action by the government and health workers, could prevent as many as one third of new cancer cases.

His may sound like a rather simplistic approach to the issue, but it is being billed as the only way that Kenya can lift itself from this worrying situation.

It is a call to stop hitting the beer bottle as if your life depended on it, to quit smoking, to lose weight, and to exercise at least three times a week.

For the younger generation, the spring chicken who think the disease is the preserve of the aging, the statistics paint a sorry picture.

Colon cancer and cancer of the rectum, commonly called colo-rectal cancer, usually affects people over 50 years of age, but it is becoming increasingly frequent in younger people, especially those aged between 30 and 50 years. It affects the colon (large intestine) or the rectum (the last part of the large intestine in the pelvis) and usually develops from a small growth on the lining of the large intestine.

Its symptoms include a change in bowel habits — either bouts of diarrhoea, constipation, or change in the size of your stool (narrow stool) — and bleeding.

A proposed Bill on the treatment and management of cancer in Kenya might prove to be the light at the end of the tunnel for the thousands living with the disease in Kenya.

Analysts have observed that the high cost of treating cancer further contributes to the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Currently, the most common treatment options include chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or surgery.

A study published in the medical journal Lancet predicts that obesity could, in future, overtake smoking and hormone replacement therapy to become the leading cause of cancer in women.

Medical experts have continually run awareness campaigns on the importance of checking one’s weight by consuming indigenous foods, but their pleas have often fallen on deaf ears as people, especially in urban areas, gravitate more towards “modern” eating habits and supermarket shelves packed with refined foods. 

Also cited as a potential risk, especially in the wake of rapidly growing urbanisation and industrialisation, is outdoor and indoor air pollution, which accounts for 71,000 cancer deaths per year around the world.