Cancer surgery is slowly becoming a daily schedule for surgeons at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital in Suva.

CWM Hospital General Surgeon Dr. Ilaitia Delasau says the four general surgeons at CWM each operate on at least an average of four breast cancer patients weekly.

Dr Delasau says this does not include the surgery carried out on other cancer patients and the lack of attention given to symptoms by patients is proving to be a major obstacle for the experts.

“Four of us general surgeons and we all do cancer surgeries. In a week, there will be at least 4 to 5 breast cancer cases and also bowel cancers so like for instance, this week, we’ve done a bowel cancer, we’ve done two breast cancers and one of those has been a recurrent breast cancer.”

Dr Delasau believes this can be reduced if cancer patients avoid traditional medicine and report to the hospital at an early stage.

The Fiji Cancer Society has so far recorded 152 cases this year with 198 cases of cancer recorded last year.

There are nine confirmed colorectal cancer patients in Fiji.