31st October, 2019
Renowned cancer specialist, Professor Aderemi Tajudeen Ajekigbe, died four months after he found that he had prostate cancer. And it was 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.
Ajekigbe, had himself revealed his health status in June to the woman, who herself is a cancer survivor.
‘Welcome back. I’ve joined your league.’ Ajekigbe told the woman.
‘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 Muhammadu 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.
Even at retirement, Prof Ajekigbe still lent his God-given intellect to research and advocacy of early detection of cancer, so that the scourge can be reduced in the country.
The President saluted the commitment to scholarship of the departed, which saw him first qualifying as an engineer, later as a pharmacist, and eventually as a medical doctor.
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.