My sister, Afua Pokuah, has been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016. I visited Ghana from Canada to find her in a lot of pain, only to realize that prior to the awful diagnosis, she had been waiting on a biopsy result for 3 months and has not been receiving treatment at all.

She submitted tissue samples on Oct 3rd, 2016. I was told by a team of doctors the test should take 3 weeks at the most to get the results. My sister has been going to the pathology department religiously since October 2016, at least 2x a week only to be told each visit the results are not back.

During my visit in January, she was in such a pain that I had to go with her to the hospital, and we were finally told the results are back...but the doctors are in a meeting so we will not be able to have them explained to us. What's more, the doctors were "in a meeting all day" so we could not obtain the results. The next day was the same story but we were finally called in around 12:30 pm after I had taken my Sister to Peace and Love Clinic at Odom to seek treatment.

I was taken aback when I read the report dates which stated :

Tissue samples were taken Oct 3, 2016

Test report received and typed Oct 21, 2016

The report was signed on JANUARY 25, 2017 and handed to me on January 26, 2017, when the reports were received in less than 3 WEEKS later. This negligence on the part of the technician, doctors or KATH as a whole has resulted in my sister now being at stage 4, receiving palliative chemo.

This is not acceptable. Please help prevent this happening to another individual. We can do better with modern treatment especially with breast Cancer than to watch people go through such awful pain. As much as the people need awareness and education, our health care team MUST be the first on the line in terms of understanding, prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

Like my sister Rose would say, "Cancer is like water poured on the ground; if you have something to hold it, it may stay. You may even be able to wipe it away and if not, then it only continues to spread."

I pray my sister Afua Pokuah gets better but hoping this will bring awareness to KATH and hopefully another individual is not living this same nightmare. Thank you,

Paulina