Kosovo's number of cancer cases decline, pandemic cause

Oncology Clinic Director Ilir Kurtishi in an interview for Kosova Prees says that in the last two months with the increase in the delivery of medical checks, the number of people affected by cancer has also been raised.

This year by July we have recorded some 780 new cases, compared to this period last year, I have 10 to 15 per cent less, since last year by July we have had about 900, 880 to 900 new cases. This is expected in view of the fact that at this time the pandemic, other medical services at the Clinical and University Clinical Service, have been less and some have been postponed, so even the diagnosis of malignant diseases has been delayed, but still, in the last two months, we have an increase in the diagnosis of cases and have increased the number of patients seeking help and healing at our “clinic, he said.

The cancer trend, according to Kurtish, continues to be the same until female gender even this year dominates breast cancer with a total of 175 new cases. Males are more prone to lung cancer, and by this time of year, about 110 patients have been counted.

The director of the Oncological Clinic says that concern is the rise in new cases of stomach cancer and panchreas.

And we've recorded almost 170-175 new cases, women of all ages with this disease in the second place, and it's primarily in men's lung cancer, and in second place and in third place comes colon cancer, or horbal cancer, that up to these moments we're talking, we've got about 100 cases, as far as lung cancer is concerned by July 2020, it's brought about from 100 to 110 new cases. On the rise and continues to worry about Kosovo, and other countries are increasing cases of glucose cancer, pancreatic cancer, and men's test cancer, where we have a number of young people who gain the disease by” year-on-year, Kurtichi noted.

At this time when the pandemic has recorded high numbers in our country, cancer patients are also facing COVID-19.

According to oncologist, Ilir Kurtishi in recent months has increased the number of cancer patients affected by coronarys.

“In the last month, the number of people with infected cancer is markedly higher because each day patients who can't come to treatment after getting fever and fever and having been diagnosed and tested for COVID and infected consultancy have been monitored and fortunately so far we have no indication that any of these patients who have been in oncological treatment and have been with COVID have ended with fatality”, Kurshiti stressed.

The spread of pandemic has not contributed to the provision of services at the Oncological Clinic. From January to now, according to the leaders of this clinic, over 100,000 services have been provided.

But COVID-19 has caused some trouble in providing drugs that patients had to provide themselves.

We've given services all the time and so far we count over 100,000 services, we've helped all patients who need oncology treatment, we've never stopped... we've modified the form of therapy, the length of therapy, the treatment period, but patients who've generally needed these services performed, and we haven't left them out of Kosovo to perform the services they needed. Drug service has been relatively good, we've had a little bit of a supply problem with some of these drugs that patients had to provide for themselves, that's the problem of economic operators, not us. And sometimes we've had problems with radiation equipment which is old”, says the director of the Oncology Clinic.