January sees 160 new cancer cases in Sudan’s El Gezira

The Cancer Hospital in Wad Madani, capital of El Gezira state in central Sudan, has reported the admission of more than 160 new cases of cancer since the beginning of this month.

“Until Tuesday, the hospital received between seven and ten new cases daily,” Nada Osman, head of the children’s department of the hospital told the press on Thursday.

“The two clinics in the town that are open two days a week, received a daily average of five cases,” she added.

In October last year, oncologists reported that the Cancer Hospital in Wad Madani was admitting 10 to 15 cases a day. Farmers in El Gezira reported a rise in cancer cases in 2015 as well, most probably resulting from the use of certain pesticides and the way the chemicals are stored and transported.

The non-governmental Food and Nutrition Organisation told Radio Dabanga in 2014 that the use of outdated pesticides in El Gezira's agricultural schemes in the past years contaminated the crops. This caused nearly 93,000 people to develop allergies, kidney diseases, and failure, as well as various forms of cancer in the period between 2008 and 2010.

Last week, Abdellatif El Jawda, Director of the People's Corporation for Patients with Kidney Failure in El Gezira reported an increase in the numbers of renal diseases patients. “About one to three new patients are recorded every day,” he said in a medical workshop in Khartoum.