Renowned cancer specialist, Professor Aderemi Ajekigbe has died four months after he found that he had stage four prostate cancer, which is often incurable, when it hits men.
Founder of Atinuke Cancer Foundation, Tinu Lawal broke the news in a newspaper interview saying Ajekigbe, had himself revealed his health status in June to her.
‘Welcome back. I’ve joined your league.’ Ajekigbe told Lawal who is a cancer survivor. ‘Which of your league, sir?’ the woman sought clarification. Ajekigbe revealed he had some complications while he was sleeping. “He couldn’t carry his body. He had to call the ambulance to carry him. By the time they ran tests and everything on him, he had prostate cancer, Stage Four,” Tinu Lawal recalled the conversation in an interview with The Nation.
“This whole thing started for him just in June, not that he had it a long time ago,” she said. According to Mayo Clinic, stage 4 prostate cancer is cancer that begins in the prostate and spreads to nearby lymph nodes or to other areas of the body.
Treatments may slow or shrink an advanced prostate cancer, but for most men, stage 4 prostate cancer isn’t curable. Still, treatments can extend your life and reduce the signs and symptoms of cancer. The symptoms are painful urination, decreased force in the stream of urine, blood in the semen bone pain, swelling in the legs and fatigue.
In a statement, President Buhari condoled with the Ajekigbe family, the academia, and the medical profession, on the passage of the renowned oncologist.
Ajekigbe retired from the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) in 2017 after decades of practice, rising to the headship of the Oncology and Radiology department. President Buhari prayed that God will comfort those who mourn the departed cancer specialist, urging that his good works and research findings be documented for the good of humanity.