In excess of $300M has been plugged into the Ministry of Health’s Cancer Programme with the annual cost of medicines amounting to approximately $150M.In fact Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, has revealed that the per capita expenditure, that is how many patients benefit and the cost of cancer medicine, is about 10 times the per capita cost of other medicines.“It is indeed far more expensive than treating an HIV patient and remember that is what everybody is focused on these days but cancer is the expensive one…the treatment of a cancer patient is extremely expensive,” he disclosed.The Guyana Cancer RegistryIn addition to medicines provided by the Ministry,Cheap NFL Jerseys, Minister Ramsammy revealed that patients themselves are also expending significant sums as well on treatment.? “We are not able to meet all of their needs so you could see when you look at the number of patients that are on treatment, about 1,000 patients, and you look at the amount of money that we are spending. We spend almost 50 per cent more than we spend on diabetes medicines where we are dealing with 40,000 people…That’s how expensive it is.”Unfortunately, the treatment of cancer is not limited to medicines but also includes chemotherapy, radiotherapy and even surgery to go along with medicines, the Minister added.He said, too, that one of the areas of cancer that the world is in deficit of is the psychological and psychiatric components,Wholesale NFL Jerseys Online, as people can become anxious and depressed. “These are deficits around the world because you provide them with their medicines and so on but there are co-morbid conditions and they are not being treated for those things,” the Minister noted.However, the local Ministry of Health has recognised the co-morbid challenge and programmes being put in place to address this.Minister Ramsammy admits that such programmes are best developed in countries like the United States and Europe since the cost is so exorbitant.? “In developing countries it is usually a non-existent part of the programme and we are now putting that in place. When you put all of that together it is a really overwhelming cost and that is why it is better we spend the money on programmes like this for greater awareness so that people can take preventative action.“For us, the earlier we recognize something…it is better so that we can do Visual Inspection with Acid (VIA) and Cryotherapy than have to deal with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery later,China NFL Jerseys,” said the Minister.And the Cancer Registry, according to him, is an ideal avenue to help address this situation. The Registry, he said, is part of the local health sector’s chronic diseases Registry including diabetes and hypertension as well.? In fact the Minister said that measures have been streamlined to make it compulsory so that very soon there will be a new regulation under the Ministry of Health Act that will require every medical practitioner to report cases that they attend to.At the moment, the reporting is done sub-optimally as not every practitioner is reporting cases. He added though that some cases are brought to the Ministry’s attention by patients themselves rather than from their clinics.And while there is a confidentiality clause, every physician and clinic in Guyana is obligated to provide the Ministry with their respective Registry.?? “This is not so that we can have a peek in people’s personal lives but it is so that we can see how many patients we have in a particular programme and our procurement of cancer medicines.”This is especially crucial, the Minister said,China Jerseys, since cancer medicines in particular are very expensive and efforts must be made to guard against having them in stock beyond an expiry date.This, he said,China Cheap Jerseys, can result if there are not enough patients to utilize the drugs, thus the data from the Registry will serve as a guideline for procurement.? “Sometimes patients die on us and we still have the medicine so the idea is that we can procure our medicine based on the individual needs rather than on the population because right now we are estimating what we buy…”Additionally,China NFL Jerseys, through the central Registry data effective measures can be made to follow-up with patients and make provision where possible for them to be attended to by visiting specialists.“We need to have this information because if an individual has breast cancer I can now use that Registry through my counseling officers at the Ministry to go check that whole family. They may not be coming forward and while we hope that they would if we have