A nongovernmental organisation, Mass Medical Mission (MMM), will today, Tuesday, December 4, 2018 in Lagos launch what it calls Health Education on the Go! The campaign involves the deployment of a fleet of special buses which are designed to combine provision of health education with public transportation.

The launch will showcase Mission PinkCruise/Mission PinkVISSION which are initiatives aimed at taking holistic preventive cancer and healthcare to the grassroots.

A statement signed by Dr Abia Nzelu said that this is important given the fact that Nigeria now has the seventh lowest life expectancy in the world (down from eleventh lowest in 2014), adding: “Most Nigerians do not live to reap the fruit of their labour.

“Cancer and its related risk factors are the major causes of untimely death in Nigeria. The global cancer burden has risen to 18.1 million new cases and 9.6 million cancer deaths in 2018 up from 14 million new cases and 8.8 million deaths in 2016.

“To address this problem, mass medical mission (mmm) has deployed the pilot set of Mobile Cancer Centres (aka “the PinkCruise”) to take holistic preventive healthcare to Nigerians. The eye-care aspect of Mission PinkCruise is known as Mission PinkVISSION, where “VISSION” stands for Voluntary Integrated Sight Saving Initiative of Nigeria.

“The PinkCruise is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities for screening and treatment (including mammography, endoscopy, colonoscopy, colposcopy, cryotherapy, laboratory, vaccination and surgeries for pre-cancer and early cancer),” the statement said.

“The pilot phase of Mission PinkCruise is currently ongoing in Lagos, following a 12-months schedule which is available on the campaign website (pinkcruise.org).

“To maximise the impact of Mission PinkCruise & Mission PinkVISSION, mmm / NCPP (National Cancer Prevention Programme) is set to launch a campaign, tagged … Health Education on the Go!”

Mass Medical Mission (MMM) is an initiative of the National Cancer Prevention Programme (NCPP), the foremost and major effort towards national cancer control in Nigeria. NCPP is involved in advocacy/awareness, screening, vaccination and treatment of early and precarious cases.

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