A professor of surgery at the University of Ghana Medical School, Professor Jonathan Dakubo, has disclosed that close to 2,000 Ghanaians die from colorectal cancer annually.
Speaking in an interview on Joy News monitored by GhanaWeb on Monday, March 31, 2025, he further disclosed that Ghana records between 3,000 and 4,000 new cases of the disease annually.
He stated that the preventable and treatable nature of colorectal cancer makes every life lost unacceptable.
“In Ghana, we see about 3,000 to 4,000 new cases every year. And about 1500, 2000 people in this country die every year. To put in perspective, the village I come from, our population is about 300.
“So, it means every year five times the population of my village is lost to this cancer”, he indicated.
Professor Dakubo identified poor diets, lack of physical activity, and substance abuse as some major risk factors.
“The first risk factor is diet, the food that we eat, the second one is our exercise levels. The third one is abuse of substances, alcohol, tobacco, opioids.
“And then we’ll talk about the hereditary cancers too, because there are some of these cancers that you inherit from your, your family. Pesticides, chemicals, and worst of all, the mining activities are going on. We are taking a lot of chemicals which change the microbial flora in our colon over time”, he noted.
He urged Ghanaians to adopt healthy lifestyles to reduce the burden of the disease.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer worldwide, accounting for approximately 10% of all cancer cases.
It is also the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths globally, predominantly affecting older individuals, with the majority of cases occurring in people aged 50 and above.
JKB/MA
Ghanaweb
