Business Daily (Nairobi)
Beatrice Gachenge
7 November 2007
An acute shortage of radiologists is undermining Kenya's fight against breast cancer, health officials have said.
Angeline Aywak, a radiography lecturer at the University of Nairobi, said the country does not have a single radiologist specialised in mammography screening creating uncertainty in the detection of breast cancer.
Dr Aywak said lack of capacity to train radiologists was part of the problem. She said the University of Nairobi, for example, only has the capacity to admit 10 radiography students annually -- but none is specifically trained on breast imaging.
"This semester I had to turn away nine students since there are no machines to cater for more than 10 students," she said. Besides, she said there are only 12 mammography machines countrywide.
Kenyatta National Hospital, the country' largest referral hospital, has only one machine that is used by students as well as for patient care. Dr Aywak said the situation is even worse for the rural folk because all the 12 machines are located in Nairobi.
Mary Onyango, executive director Kenya Breast Health Programme, termed a recent partnership with the Safaricom Foundation to provide mobile mammography services a drop in the ocean saying the needs were immense.
Yesterday, the Aga Khan Hospital said it was installing a state-of-the-art mammography machine at a cost of Sh10 million to boost the fight against breast cancer.
Vinayak Sudhia, a radiologist consultant at Aga Khan University Hospital, said the machine would enable radiologists to identify the tiniest specs in the breast that have been a major challenge to medics. Aga Khan Hospital has only two radiologists specialis ed in breast cancer.
Dr Aywak said the University of Nairobi was in the process of reviewing the fees for radiology students in tandem with other medical courses.
Currently, the students pay Sh120,000 per year, and these may hit the Sh500,000 mark after the review.
Besides, health experts said absence of standards governing radiographers was undermining the accreditation of local practitioners on the global platform. Such standards normally indicate how many mammographies a radiologist must perform to get accredited.
Internationally, for a radiographer dealing with breast cancer to be licensed, he/she must perform at least 2000 mammography screenings a year.
Rose Nyabanda, a senior radiologist at KNH said such a feat would be impossible to achieve in Kenya since a hospital like Kenyatta only handles an average of 10 patients per month.
"This means local radiologists are not exposed to many readings as is required by the profession," she said.
A mammography seeks to expose benign cancers at an early stage.
Health experts also regretted that only a small fraction of Kenyans were undertaking voluntary screening. "Women as well as men need to walk in hospitals whether they have lumps or not for a breast screening," said Ms Onyango.
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