A doctor from Bradford Teaching Hospitals is helping the Government in Mauritius set up a national cancer screening programme which aims to save lives.
Consultant Gastroenterologist, Dr. Sulleman Moreea, was approached by officials from the Indian Ocean island nation, where he was born and brought up, to look at how officials could establish a colon cancer screening service within the country’s existing facilities.
Colorectal cancer is the second most common cancer in men and the third most common in women in Mauritius – it currently has a 50 per cent mortality rate.
Dr. Moreea said:
I started training doctors in Mauritius in endoscopy in 2008 as the service didn’t exist on the island before then. I began teaching in one hospital but there are five hospitals in Mauritius so it’s wasn’t a quick process.
Since then I’ve returned home frequently to train the island’s doctors and we have now got to a position where we have developed endoscopy units at all five hospitals, with trained doctors able to carry out procedures, so we now have a good service.
In 2008, doctors carried our endoscopies on 250 patients, compared to last year where they conducted 6,000, and we were now in a position where the first generation of endoscopists are now teaching new doctors in this skill which is a good place to be.
In 2014, an oncologist visited Dr Moreea while he was visiting the island on a training trip and revealed that experts had noticed an increase in colon cancer.
In 2014 there were 250 cases of colon cancer with a 50 per cent mortality which had risen to 313 cases in 2020 – what was needed was a national screening programme so cases could be picked up early, but at the time the country didn’t have enough highly trained endoscopists or units set up to launch it.
Dr. Moreea continued:
By 2021 I felt the island’s doctors were sufficiently proficient to be ready to start setting up a colon cancer screening which will help catch bowel cancer in the early stages when it is treatable and potentially curable.
I was asked how to go about this and I said ‘the UK has a marvellous system and we should invite experts form the UK to come and share their knowledge and advise the island on how to proceed’.
I set up a conference where I asked five other NHS experts, who are big hitters in the UK regarding colon cancer screening, to come and help me advise the government on how to do this and they graciously came. They came in their own time and out of the kindness of their hearts and I am forever grateful to them.
The six person UK delegation included the Director of the South of England Screening Hub, Sally Benton, Professor of Health Data Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, Eva Morris, along with staff from North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust who included Clinical Director of Bowel Screening, Consultant Gastroenterologist Professor Matt Rutter, Programme Manager Andrew Henson and Lead Specialist Screening Practitioner, Kelley Williamson who help run the Tees Screening Centre which provides the NHS bowel cancer screening service for men and women across Teesside and parts of County Durham and North Yorkshire.
The two-day conference took place in September and brought together 100 dignitaries, including the Prime Minister of Mauritius, and representatives from the country’s health service and government, including doctors, biochemists, healthcare managers and civil servants.
Each member of the UK delegation presented on different elements of the colon screening programme here in England. They also spent a further day visiting local hospitals to see the how the current endoscopy facilities could be best implemented in a new colon cancer screening service.
The UK experts have now written a detailed report which has been sent to island’s cabinet to approve.
Dr. Moreea added:
A screening service will cost around £500,000 a year to run but it is felt a good investment to prevent colon cancer happening in the future.
The UK has taken about 50 years to get the system right and we hope to achieve the same position in just five years in Mauritius.
The government will take 12 months to set up the whole pathway of screening by getting to the position where we will screen the first patient in November 2023. The team remains committed and available for advice on ongoing basis and I am very grateful to them.
I will continue to be involved as an advisor as it gives me enormous pleasure to be able to translate the knowledge that I have gained here in an advanced country and give it back to my homeland. It is fantastic co-operation and it stops people from dying – 50 per cent are dying currently – and it is a completely preventable disease.
Currently in Bradford, everyone aged between 56 and 74 is invited to take part in bowel screening and complete a FIT kit every two years from their home. It is hoped that the test will be extended to include younger age groups in the future.