Research facility investment possibility

Barbados could become the home for a cancer research facility in the coming years, Minister of Health and Wellness Ian Gooding-Edghill has disclosed.

He recently disclosed that a potential investor had approached his ministry with the idea of setting up such a facility on the island.

While opting not to disclose much, Gooding-Edghill said discussions were at the preliminary stages, adding that he was due to have several meetings with the investor this month to have a “greater understanding” of the kind of investment that would be forthcoming.

“An investor had approached the ministry to undertake an investment opportunity to have a cancer clinic in Barbados,” he told fellow lawmakers recently as the debate on the 2022/2023 Estimates continued in Parliament.

He said, “any investment in cancer research and our management of cancer will be welcomed by the ministry and certainly by the government of Barbados”.

Gooding-Edghill, who lost his mother to breast cancer when he was 14-years-old, said he sympathised with those who were affected by cancer as he pledged that his ministry will focus more on research in an effort to effectively manage the disease.

“Breast cancer, like all others, constitutes a major risk factor that we are going to have to investigate and we will work closely with research in order to understand what is happening out there to better inform our approaches to the management of cancer,” he promised.

The latest report of the Barbados National Registry on cancer in Barbados showed that in 2015, the last year for which data was available, there were some 1,030 cases of cancer reported, with prostate cancer remaining the cancer of greatest concern in men.

The seven most common cancers recorded in Barbados in 2015 in descending order were prostate, breast, colon, rectum, corpus Uteri, stomach and lung cancer.

The total number of cancer cases in women was 544 while the total number of cancer cases in men was 486 for the year in review. (MM)