FROM a group of research scientists comes the news of a groundbreaking study that may lead to the discovery of a drug for cancer cure. The team, led by Isa Marte Hussaini, a professor of Pharmacology at the University of Maiduguri, has identified eight local herbs or plants that are more efficacious than the drugs currently being used in the treatment of cancer.
These herbs, Hussaini said, showed “extraordinary” anti-cancer properties against cancers of the breast and brain. He said, “We have characterised and identified some plants. We have tested them and they are very effective. Eight out of the 54 that we have are better than even the current drugs that are used in the treatment of cancer.”
The research result has been presented to the Nigerian Academy of Science. Interestingly, the research team comprises orthodox trained scientists – medical doctors, pharmaceutical chemists, pharmacognosists, pharmacologists – and a medicinal herbalist, who acts as a consultant.
Making its scientific findings known to a peer group such as NAS is just one in a chain of steps that must be taken to consummate the research. Others include pre-clinical and clinical trials, all of which involve heavy financial support. Completing the team’s work, Hussaini says, requires between N100 million and N200 million. This is a challenge to the government, corporate bodies and the rich in our midst with eyes for public cause.
In societies where cutting-edge research is valued, money will not be an obstacle to Hussaini’s team. The Tertiary Education Trust Fund, which assisted it financially to get this far, is beckoned to go the extra-mile. Besides, NAS, which has Oyewale Tomori, a consummate researcher and virology professor, as its president, should stir a drive for financial support from necessary agencies, both local and international.
Very instructive is the role played by a medicinal herbalist in the research. There could not have been any better evidence for the orthodox and traditional medical practitioners to collaborate to advance the frontiers of health care than this in Nigeria. For long, the former had held the latter in utter contempt.
However, Anthony Elujoba, a professor of Pharmacognosy at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, believes that it should not be so, stressing that herbs have utilisable therapeutic values, and “could bring both health and wealth to this nation like (they have done in) China and India.”
It was for this reason that the World Health Organisation, at its 67th assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2014, passed a resolution on the integration of traditional medicine into the global health care delivery system. WHO sees this as a veritable strategy for building a knowledge base that could enhance policies, strengthen quality assurance, safety and use of traditional medicine.
Ghana is ahead of Nigeria in this integration drive. Apart from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, graduating students in B.Sc. (Herbal Medicine), the practitioners, according to Elujoba, serve both in private and government establishments.
For research such as Hussaini’s to thrive in Nigeria, a new policy direction is needed in the study of science and technology. Research culture should be inculcated in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions. Unfortunately, this is not the case here, as science laboratories in all our educational levels lack even the basic elements such as reagents and Bunsen burners. Absurdly, our research institutes are allocated more funds for recurrent expenditure than for research.
None of the acclaimed countries in medical science made it through this weird course. For instance, the National Institute for Human Research based in the United Kingdom is funding research in 73 universities and colleges to the tune of £200 million in 2015-16, to strengthen teaching in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. When this is added to the £958.9 million it spent in 2012 to 2013, the lip service paid to scientific enquiry in Nigeria becomes obvious.
Cancer, an abnormal growth of cells that spread to other organs, is a global scourge. In 2012, 14.1 million were the estimated number of cases, of which 7.4 million cases were men, while 6.7 million were women. Here in Nigeria, the National Cancer Prevention Programme says that 80,000 people die annually from the ailment, just as 100,000 others are diagnosed.
However, the country has only six radiotherapy centres, against the backdrop of its large population of 170 million, contrary to WHO’s standard of one centre for 250,000 patients. Though the disease is not communicable, the increasing number of cases is alarming. Parts of the body the disease invades include lung, liver, breast, oesophagus, bladder, brain, ovary, kidney, prostrate and blood etc.
But experts have identified breast and cervical cancers as the deadliest for women in Nigeria, while prostate cancer is men’s nemesis. The disease, which respects neither age nor status, has claimed the lives of notable Nigerians, which included Gani Fawehinmi, Dora Akunyili, Maryam Babangida, Olusola Saraki, Sunny Okosun, Yinka Craig, and Omo Omoruyi.
Despite this awful picture, the disease is no longer an irrevocable death sentence, as there are victims who have survived it. But being lucky depends largely on early screening and detection. More importantly, maintaining a healthy life style reduces the possibility of one being a victim.
Tobacco, alcohol, exposure to radiation and sun, chemicals, lack of physical activity and being overweight are cancer risk factors, which, however, can be prevented; but old age and family history (cancer), which are also risk factors, are not preventable.
Since cancer fatality rate is high, and our health care delivery is very poor, an aggressive public enlightenment programme by government is advisable, to save Nigerians from falling victim to this dreaded disease.
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