Welcome Our New Durban Patient Affairs Board Chairman Dumisani Pakkies
Our newly appointed Patient Affairs Board Chairman, Dumisani Pakkies, is a 53 year old prostate cancer survivor with a passion to educate men about the disease, and the importance of risk and age appropriate screening. He knows what it’s like to battle through the side effects of various treatments, and attributes his survival and recovery to running. His journey with prostate cancer has helped him to realise that because men are so reluctant to talk about the disease, they are missing the opportunity to be screened and diagnosed in the early stage stages of the disease when treatments are potentially curable.
He has already recruited his first volunteer Patient Affairs Board member, Sibongiseni Nxumalo. After undergoing basic training on prostate cancer they were off to a quick start with two awareness events in one day.
We applaud there passion and efforts, and look forward to seeing the impact that they will have in KwaZulu-Natal. The need is huge with one study at Edendale hospital showing that the majority of men who presented with symptoms of prostate cancer had advanced stage aggressive prostate cancer . 660% of these men had cancer that had already spread which is called metastatic prostate cancer. At this stage the cancer cannot be cured and treatments are focused on slowing disease progression and reducing complications from the disease having spread.
We still need volunteer prostate cancer survivors to join our Patient Affairs Board in many other areas, so if you are a prostate cancer survivor and you have a passion to help educate men about the disease give us a call or send us an e-mail.