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Dr. OGE ILEGBUNE Reveals Them
Two Saturdays ago, 20 September, 2025, she gave a lecture at the Reunion Party of Wesley Girl’s Secondary School Old Students Association 2025. She spoke extensively about the various Cancers that are common in Nigeria. City People Reporter, Olusola Abiodun interviewed her on the Four Cancers and how Nigerians can prevent themselves from having them.
Dr. Oge Ilegbune is a graduate of the University of Nigeria College of Medicine. She completed her Residency in General Practice in the United Kingdom, becoming a qualified General Practitioner and practiced for 8 years in Primary Care in the UK with interest in non-communicable disease screening and general preventive measures from a strategic, cost-effective but holistic and patient-centered approach. She is a Principal Clinician at Dennis Ashley Clinic, a Primary Care Clinic in Oniru.
She is the Medical Director at the Lakeshore Cancer Center with branches in VI, Ikeja and Port Harcourt where she is part of a dynamic team that focuses on cancer education and awareness, screening and prevention as well as supporting the clinical team in their delivery of cancer services like diagnosis, treatment and palliation. Several tools have been designed for effective delivery of information and services including collaboration with other like-minded groups as well as the very impactful Lakeshore E-learning platform tool known as the Learn With Lakeshore where she is a course facilitator helping to develop and deliver courses.
Dr. Oge Ilegbune is an advocate of lifelong learning and has completed a Certificate Programme in Healthcare Management at the Enterprise Development Centre (EDC) affiliated with the Pan African University (PAU) and Lagos Business School. She has a Certificate in Healthcare Financial Management from the Healthcare Leadership Academy. She has also completed Certificate Programmes in Leadership and Management, as well as Project Management, both from the University of Washington.
Can you briefly talk about those cancers and how they can be prevented ?
Thank you very much for the questions. Now we live in a period where we can’t just ignore the fact that cancer is on the rise. It’s been on the rise ages ago, but now with social media, better detection, techniques, we now know that we have cancers within our environment. But we are focusing on the four cancers that you can at least screen for. Screening, meaning that even without seeing any signs every year, you go and have a health check and there are methods to screen for those particular cancers. So they are four. Number one, breast cancer, which I think everybody is aware of, cervical cancer, which again is a female cancer. The cervix is the mouth of the womb. The prostrate cancer in men, and bowel cancer, or coloretal cancer in both men and women. And there are various ways to screen for those. And unlike what people think, they are actually not expensive, what is expensive is when you now get that cancer and it is very advanced. There’s no way to mince words, Cancer management is expensive. But this screening tests are fairly straightforward. If it’s a breast cancer, to examine your breasts, when you get to 40, you have an x-ray for cervical cancer, every three years, the gnostics or doctor takes a sample from the cervix and send it to the lab to check for abnormal cells or HPV, which is the virus, human papilloma virus that causes 99% of all cervical cancers. Then for prostates, you have the PSA test. Some doctors still like to feel for the prostate to see what he feels like. Again, once a year from the age of 40 and above. And then for the bowel, cancer screening again from the age of 40, what’s called the colonoscopy, which is a camera that you put through the backside and a check. And if it’s normal, you don’t actually need to do another colonoscopy for another 10 years, but you can do what’s called these two FIT tests, which can detect blood in two every year. So, you know, these things are available in Nigeria. They are available here in Lagos. They are not hiding anywhere. It’s there. It’s just that we also need doctors to be able to talk to patients and tell them they need to do their screening. It’s not just all these health screening. People all seem to know about that, but nobody is talking about your breast examination, your mamogram and all that. So that was why I wanted to talk to the Association of the WOGA to say to them, when you’re doing all those screenings, please remember to do all those words as well.
Briefly, can you explain more about cervical cancer, prostate cancer, the Bowel cancer?
Okay, so anywhere you have abnormal cells in the body. Abnormal meaning it’s not meant to be there. It doesn’t look good. You call it a cancer. So if it’s in the breast, as you already said, it’s breast cancer. If it’s in the Cervix, that mouth of the womb, when you take the sample and send it to the lab and it appears, it is cervical cancer. Now, what you are trying to do is detect these things before the person, even starts having symptoms, but in some cases, many cases here, people present late. So by then, if it’s cervical cancer they’ll be presenting with abnormal bleeding. Instead of having your normal every month bleeding, you might be having in between or for a woman who even stopped bleeding a long time ago, suddenly they start bleeding or when they have sex, it’s painful, or they start having very smelly discharge or they start having back pain. By the time you’re talking about back pain with cervical cancer, the thing has started spreading. So that is cervical cancer. Most people will not come early with any symptoms. It’s when it’s advanced, which is why we always tell them don’t wait for when it is advanced, every three years you go and do your tests, okay? That’s for cervical cancer. And it’s very common because HPV virus, which is the human papilloma virus, which causes 99% of cervical cancer, it’s very much transmitted sexually. So even though it’s not an STD, like you have chlamydia gonorra, but it’s from sexual contact as well. and people are having sex all the time. So if the body is not able to clear that virus and it persists, almost five years later, it can become such a problmes changing the cells around the cervix to becoming abnormal. And then the problem starts.
For prostate cancer, the prostate gland that only men have. Women don’t have it and it’s around the bladder, the neck of the bladder. And it starts enlarging and causing problem there now. Don’t get me wrong. Not all prostate enlargement is prostate cancer. But as far as you have enlarment, as far as you do that test, PSA tests for detecting it and it is abnormal, you must see a doctor so they can do other tests to say to you, okay, this is just normal enlargement not a problem. It’s not cancer. But if it’s cancer, then they can do other things. The black man has a higher incidence of prostrate cancer. And the good thing is, prostate is one of the cancers that when you discover it early, it’s treatable,’s curable, not all cancers can be cured, but prostate cancer is if detected early.
The bowel cancer is in the guts, the bowel, you know, your intestine. Again, the way it presents blood is to alternating diarrhea, can say any change in your bowel habits. You know, you should see the doctor. Again, changing habit doesn’t mean it’s cancer. The other conditions of the intestine that can cause that, but you cannot take it for granted. So the problem is, people start feeling ill, they go to the pharmacy, they don’t go to the doctor. So by the time people present to the doctor, they’ve gone to mountain of fire with all due respect, prayers are good, but medical treatment is very important. They’ve going to pharmacy, they’ve gone to auxiliary. You know, they’ve seen everybody but the doctor. And by then, you’re talking about stage three, you heard me talking about the stages. stage four. We can still do something, but it’s more expensive, the financial burden, the emotional burden. You don’t have as much guarantee of cure as someone who came in state zero or stage one, which is why screening and lifestyle measures are key. They are very key. I was being offered fanta and coke. I’m like, I’m running, I only collect for my driver. But you know, so everybody has to try. Even you as a young man, you can take the message to your family as well
Can you just briefly talk about the stages, from the zero, one, two, three, and four.
So with the stages, so let me guess, there’s a diagram. It’s just that I didn’t get the opportunity to share the screen. So with the stages, it’s very interesting because sometimes it’s even takes, you know, a long time before it goes from one stage to the other. And that’s the amount of time we waste seeking help. So you have stage zero, where it just abnormal cells, it’s not even a cancer yet it is what we call insitu. It’s just there. It hasn’t gone anywhere and you cannot detect it by feeling. It’s only screening that can detect it.
Then you have stage one, which is an early stage. It is a cancer, but it’s small and it’s only in that area. So if it’s breast, it’s only in that area, it hasn’t gone anywhere. Then you have stage two, where it has now grown larger. So the person can start feeling it and maybe it’s gone into the armpits. I’m using breast as an example. So it has now gone beyond the armpit and that means it’s already potentially going to spread. Then, and that’s stage three as well, and then stage four, You can now find it in the lungs, in the back, in the liver.
–Olusola Abiodun
