At the beginning of the covid19 pandemic in March 2020 there was a drop in cancer screening, reports chairperson of the Trinidad and Tobago Cancer Society Dr Asante Le Blanc.
However, after the first lockdown, the organisation promoted screening despite the pandemic, encouraging people not to delay “because cancer is not going to wait on covid.”
As such, in 2019, the Cancer Society conducted 2,077 breast ultrasounds but only did 1,840 in 2020, and 1,364 in 2021 to date. Mammogram numbers remained relatively constant with 2,582 in 2019; 2,537 in 2020; and 1,845 in 2021 so far. And these measures detected 30, 38, and 27 cases of breast cancer respectively.
Le Blanc stressed that the Cancer Society’s services are limited to screening and so does not offer cancer treatment. But once diagnosed, patients are navigated into the private or public sector for treatment.
It provides mammograms; clinical breast examinations; pap smears; breast, abdomen, pelvic, obstetric, doppler, and thyroid ultrasounds; biopsies; digital rectal and prostate specific antigen prostate examinations; faecal immunochemical tests; blood tests; and consultations.
The screening promotion has been relatively successful, said Le Blanc, and over the past few months, the Cancer Society has been detecting more cases of cancer and getting them at earlier stages.
She said with covid19, people’s immediate lives are in the balance so almost every country in the world had to reallocate many resources to fight the virus. So, even though diagnoses were made, because of the virus, sometimes treatments were delayed due to a lack of human and pharmacological resources.
[caption id="attachment_918716" align="alignnone" width="683"] Dr Asante Le Blanc, chairperson of the TT Cancer Society. PHOTO BY JEFF K MAYERS [/caption]
“The pandemic impacted greatly on a lot of NCDs (noncommunicable diseases), which includes cancer, a lot of preventative health, and a lot of chronic illnesses in terms of treatments and follow ups. So, while we have had advances and progress in the arena of breast cancer treatment, we probably didn’t see it as much in TT as yet.
“Everyone is working tirelessly against cancer. It didn’t take a backseat when it came to research and so forth, but it definitely took a backseat when it came to allocation of resources, availability of access to certain resources in a timely manner owing to the pandemic, which was unavoidable.”
She believed the pandemic will continue to hamper accessibility to improved treatments as there are delayed treatments, difficulties getting appointments, and increased need for certain drugs.
“There were physician specialists who left their practices or jobs because they volunteered to help with covid. A lot of us gave of our time because we wanted to help our colleagues and help the nation.”
There were also difficulties getting repairs to equipment as some businesses were closed or lost employees.
“The stress of covid on all of
