New Cancer Control Center to be completed by 2019

KUWAIT: Al-Sabah Medical Zone Director Dr Afrah Al-Sarraf announced the completion of 15.12 percent of the new Cancer Control Center that is expected to be finished by 2019. Speaking on the sidelines of marking GCC Cancer Awareness Week at Faisal Sultan bin Essa Center for Radio Diagnosis and Radiotherapy under the auspices of Health Minister Dr Jamal Al-Harbi, Sarraf said the new center would include 618 beds including 90 in ICU, multi-floor parking for 2,000 vehicles, 23 wards and 11 surgery rooms built over a total area of 293,000 sq m.

Sarraf stressed that the GCC Cancer Awareness Week reflects Kuwait’s and GCC states’ keenness on boosting awareness on cancer. KCCC director and the head of the GCC Cancer Awareness Week’s joint committee Dr Ahmed Al-Awadhi said MoH has been annually marking this week in February. He also pointed out that rates of healing from cancer have reached 80 percent in Kuwait and that it was a wrong concept to associate cancer with death.

Also speaking on the occasion, the head of GCC Cancer Awareness Week’s executive supreme committee Dr Khaled Al-Saleh said this week’s slogan is ‘40-40’, which means that reducing and avoiding carcinogenic elements would reduce the incidence of cancer by 40 percent, while early detection will reduce another 40 percent, especially since 102 out of every 100,000 annually develop cancerrelated diseases in Kuwait, with breast cancer the most common.