By Haruna Gimba
Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, said with the rising population of Nigeria, the country required about 200 Radiotherapy centres to effectively treat cancer and other related diseases.
Professor Adewole stated this in Abuja when he received the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mr. Yukiya Amano at the Ministry of Health headquarters.
He decried the poor treatment of patients requiring the use of radiotherapy service, saying less than 10 per cent of such services were being provided.
“For 170 million people, we need not less than 200 of those machines in Nigeria. So if you have seven and only two are working then something is seriously wrong. And to me it has not really portrayed in good light that we care for our people; so we need to really invest,” he said.
Earlier, Mr. Amano said the agency was working to improve the use of nuclear technology in medicine.
