Fighting Cancer in Africa - Voices of doctors and patients (IAEA) April 2006
It's my job: The doctor
Dr Ponsiano Baguma: Doctor
Summary:
Doctor Ponsiano Baguma's job is to diagnose, assess and then send his cancer patients for treatment. It is difficult to tell someone they have cancer and explain what radiation therapy is, so he has to choose his words carefully. Dr Baguma was trained to preserve life and so is demoralised when most of his patients don't survive more than a few years because they came late for treatment. However when radiation works and someone improves, he is given strength to continue.
Suggested introduction:
Sometimes, even for people who work treating cancer all the time, it is hard to find the right words. It is difficult to tell someone they have cancer. It needs care to explain what radiation is and how a small amount of this powerful energy can be targeted at a cancer or tumour to stop it growing. Dr Ponsiano Baguma always chooses his words carefully to help his patients understand what cancer is and the treatment he suggests.
Tape in:
I am Doctor Ponsiano Baguma...
Tape out:
...gives us strength to continue.
Closing Announcement:
A media toolkit for reporting on cancer and its treatment. This pack has been produced for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Transcript
Baguma
I am Doctor Ponsiano Baguma. So my job is I see patients, talk to them about their disease, tell them what is possible to be done for them, and then send them over to the radiographer for treatment.
Patients normally come to us when a diagnosis has been made, most of them, but also several of them have not actually been told that they have got cancer. Our doctors down in the hospital and also from up country sometimes fear telling patients that they have got cancer and they expect us to break the bad news. Sometimes this is not very easy to give the bad news, to give the diagnosis.
Many of them of course will not take the news very lightly. Then we say now you have got cancer and the best treatment that is available now in this country is radiation therapy. In fact here we call it electricity because we don't have that word radiotherapy and telling them that it is ionising radiation becomes difficult - but they understand electricity. We shall make sure that it goes in and kills the cancer cells, while the other surrounding normal tissues will be readily spared.
As a doctor I was trained to preserve life. But most of the patients I see do not survive more than a year or two. Most of our patients come late with huge tumours and that is one of the causes of failure. If these patients came early with small tumours maybe the outcome would be better. Sometimes you feel like running away from your patient. But again what encourages me and gives me satisfaction is some of the patients do improve and some of them come when they are smiling the following month. And then you see that radiation therapy actually works. And then that gives us strength to continue. End of track
