According to Zainab-Shinkafi Bagudu, the first lady of Kebbi State and founder of the Medicaid Cancer Foundation, over 40,000 Nigerian children are given cancer diagnoses each year.
At the foundation's annual roundtable commemorating kids cancer month on Tuesday in Abuja, she made the admission.
She said that compared to high-income countries, where roughly 85% of pediatric cancer cases were successfully treated, only 80% of cases in Nigeria and other low-income nations resulted in death.
The cancer burden in the nation and throughout the world, according to her explanation, "was under-documented as the number of diagnosed cases surpassed the expected number."
The originator cited a lack of documentation as a result of professionals and parents' inadequate diagnosis and low level of suspicion.
The First Lady thought that the best course of action for combating children cancer in Nigeria was for clinicians to have a high index of suspicion and for more doctors to be trained in that area.
Dr. Adewunmi Oyesakin, the chief of the pediatric oncology section at the National Hospital in Abuja, noted that the bulk of the 400, 000 to 500, 000 children diagnosed with childhood cancer each year are found in underdeveloped nations and sub-Saharan Africa.