ONE breast cancer survivor is appealing to the Government to furnish public hospitals with the equipment desperately needed to detect and assess cancer as well as enable patients to move forward with treatment in order to increase their chances of survival.

Leodis Douglas, who was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010 and did her second mastectomy last December, said it is unlikely that she would still be alive today if she had to depend on the public health system for treatment.

“When you look at what is happening to persons from low socio-economic backgrounds… when you have a patient who is at KPH [Kingston Public Hospital] who has gotten the surgery done and is then given say nine months before that person can start treatment… doing it nine months later is like it’s not going to help the patient because the patient is getting worse,” she said.

Douglas, an executive member of Jamaica Reach to Recovery — the support arm of the Jamaica Cancer Society — pointed to her own reality.

“Since I did my surgery, I am now to do a PET [positron emission topography] scan… [but] that machine is not at the public hospital… the cost [of the scan] is over $300,000, and I have not done it yet because I have been spending from 2010 all that I have earned in order to stay alive. If I wanted to live I could not have gone to KPH to do my treatment, I had to get it done privately.

“I had to do radiation, 25 sessions; I had to get help, with all my savings, friends chipped in… This burns my heart when I see that people could live longer with this disease, people could be taken care of, if we just had the treatments,” she emphasised.

She commended the Government for the subsidies for cancer treatment it provides through the National Health Fund, but said diagnostics are a critical part of the process.

“PET scans can pick up a small dot.. We need those machines,” Douglas urged.

She further implored the private sector to partner with public hospitals to acquire these equipment for cancer screening.

“We need the help, Jamaica Cancer Society needs it, [Jamaica] Reach to Recovery needs it,” she pleaded.

Consultant general surgeon Dr Hugh Roberts and general surgeon and breast surgical oncologist Dr Jason Copeland, both doctors at Kingston Public Hospital, say the problem of individuals losing the battle with cancer stems both from late detection and the challenges plaguing the public health system, such as having to go to multiple facilities for the various diagnostics and treatments.

One of the major thorns in the sides of patients and medical personnel remains the decades-old absence of mammography units in the island’s public health facilities. This forces patients to seek screening either at the Jamaica Cancer Society (JCS) or at private labs at a cost, which, outside of the JCS, is prohibitive for many.

Dr Roberts said that, in his 18 years at the KPH, he cannot recall there having been a mammography machine at the facility, and that medical personnel have had to find ways around that obstacle.

“It’s the number one cancer among women and [yet] you don’t have the only approved investigation to treat it. The reason why that happens is because all of us find ways to work around the system… It doesn’t make any sense complaining, you still have the patient in front of you, you still have to get it [done]. So we send the patients to private institutions or we call [Jamaica Cancer Society] and say we need a favour, and people acquiesce and try to help out… but that’s the reality.

“The fact of the matter is that we have tried,” he explained, noting that a similar situation existed in relation to a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine at KPH until 2007, when Jamaica hosted Cricket World Cup.

“You know what that building has now in it? Nothing, because the machines stopped working and no one has fixed it, and it is now just a vacant building at the back of the hospital,” Dr Roberts said.

He stressed that he was not pointing fingers at any particular administration, but lamented the fact that the public health system has been in this state of deficiency for decades.

There was agreement between the doctors that more patients would have better outcomes if the public health system could more effectively facilitate diagnosis and treatment.

They say that the capacity to offer better patient care would be much improved if the equipment stock was given the requisite attention.