Implant therapy first for Provincial patients

IN a public sector first for the Eastern Cape, three prostate cancer patients have received brachytherapy treatment.

The procedures – used to treat cancer by inserting a radioactive implant close to or in affected tissue – were carried out at the Port Elizabeth Provincial Hospital last week.

Livingstone and Provincial hospitals chief executive Thulane Madonsela said patients with early prostate cancer could be assisted with this treatment.

Patients’ time and travel costs would be reduced as they would otherwise have had to receive daily radiotherapy for seven weeks.

Madonsela said: “Until last week this treatment was not done at state hospitals.

“Only patients with medical aid could access it, as it was only available at private hospitals.”

Brachytherapy will also relieve some of the burden on the radiation machine at Livingstone Hospital, where 7 827 patients were treated using just a single machine last year.

Three hundred patients are waiting for radiation, with the waiting list four to five months long.

Bard Medical sponsored the radioactive seeds for the three patients.

“The company also sponsored an oncologist and a physicist from the Limpopo Department of Health to assist in the procedure,” Madonsela said.

“The idea was to bring the service to the state hospital.

“It was also about imparting skills to doctors working in the public sector, as this training is only done in private hospitals.

“This was also for the benefit of the patients.

“The outcomes of the procedure are good in correctly chosen patients and it saves them time and money,” he said.

Urologist Dr Khanyisa Makamba said there was a whole team of people who made the treatment happen.

Nelson Mandela University health sciences executive dean Professor Lungile Pepeta said last week that Makamba, one of the first South African doctors trained in Cuba, had specialised in urology.

Pepeta said: “These are the kinds of doctors we need [in] our province and country because Cuba’s excellent medical schools pursue a comprehensive approach to medicine [focusing] equally on the four pillars of medicine: disease prevention, health promotion, treatment and [rehabilitation].”

After training in Cuba in 2004, Makamba specialised in urology at Medunsa in Limpopo.

Prostate cancer is one of the 10 major causes of death for men over 65 in Nelson Mandela Bay, causing 4.9% of deaths.