OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The John E Sab­ga Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion is sound­ing the alarm over what it de­scribes as a wor­ry­ing in­crease in pan­cre­at­ic can­cer in Trinidad and To­ba­go, even among young women, as it re­news calls for stronger ad­vo­ca­cy, ear­ly de­tec­tion, and ro­bust gov­ern­ment-led da­ta col­lec­tion.

Speak­ing at the foun­da­tion’s an­nu­al lun­cheon and sup­port group event held at Blue Line Restau­rant, Movie Towne yes­ter­day to mark the start of World Pan­cre­at­ic Can­cer Month in No­vem­ber, founder Na­tal­ie Sab­ga said that pan­cre­at­ic can­cer has be­come the third lead­ing cause of can­cer-re­lat­ed deaths glob­al­ly, with lo­cal num­bers be­lieved to be on the rise.

“We are see­ing a mas­sive in­crease in pan­cre­at­ic can­cer,” Sab­ga said. “We have sit­u­a­tions where eight peo­ple in a one-mile ra­dius are liv­ing with the dis­ease, and some­thing doesn’t make sense. We need to de­mand bet­ter about what’s go­ing in­to our fruits, veg­eta­bles, and wa­ter sys­tem, and ad­dress tox­ins from burn­ing, land­fills, and the oil and gas in­dus­try.”

Sab­ga al­so re­vealed that emerg­ing glob­al da­ta has been show­ing a rise in pan­cre­at­ic can­cer among young women be­tween the ages of 15 and 50, which she de­scribed as “a new and alarm­ing trend.”

She urged cit­i­zens to “know their bod­ies” and not to ig­nore per­sis­tent symp­toms such as sud­den weight loss, new-on­set di­a­betes af­ter age 50, or chron­ic ab­dom­i­nal and back pain, all of which could be ear­ly in­di­ca­tors of pan­cre­at­ic can­cer.

“We need our doc­tors to feel more com­fort­able di­ag­nos­ing this dis­ease ear­ly,” she said. “And we, as pa­tients, need to be ad­vo­cates for our own health and de­mand bet­ter.”

Found­ed in mem­o­ry of busi­ness­man John E Sab­ga, who lost his bat­tle with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer in 2017, the foun­da­tion has since been com­mit­ted to ad­vo­ca­cy, pa­tient sup­port, re­search fund­ing, and part­ner­ships with lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Can­cer So­ci­ety.

The event, which al­so fea­tured Lisa Ghany, a mem­ber of the foun­da­tion’s lead­er­ship team, high­light­ed the glob­al cam­paign theme De­mand Bet­ter for Pa­tients and Sur­vival and un­der­scored the im­por­tance of re­search, aware­ness, and part­ner­ships.

Ghany not­ed that while nine per cent more pa­tients are now liv­ing be­yond five years post-di­ag­no­sis, an im­prove­ment from pre­vi­ous decades, pan­cre­at­ic can­cer’s sur­vival rate re­mains in the sin­gle dig­its.

She al­so lament­ed the ab­sence of a na­tion­al can­cer reg­istry, which con­tin­ues to ham­per ac­cu­rate lo­cal da­ta col­lec­tion.

Sab­ga, mean­while, praised sur­vivors at­tend­ing the lun­cheon re­ferred to as “the one per­centers” as sym­bols of hope, while urg­ing greater pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in aware­ness ef­forts.

“We want peo­ple to wear pur­ple, to talk about pan­cre­at­ic can­cer, to sup­port re­search, and to join us in this fight,” she said. “Breast can­cer was once a death sen­tence, but re­search changed that. Now we need to do the same for pan­cre­at­ic can­cer.”