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By Dr Avron Urison, Chief Medical Officer at 1Life Insurance
Did you know that lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in South Africa? If your answer is no, then you are not alone because this reality is equally devastating, and there is a lack of awareness among South Africans. Moreover - a study by CANSA further revealed that lung cancer is the third most common cancer amongst South African men and the seventh most common cancer amongst South African women. So, you’re probably thinking – why are people dying the most from the less popular type of cancer? The commonly noted issue from a medical perspective is that people don’t know! So then, how do you solve an unknown problem? We will get to that in a bit.
Though the public, medical and insurance fraternities have done much to bridge the education gap when it comes to various forms of dread diseases, there is still a lot of work to be done to drive this education further to ensure that we can curb the medical and financial impact across personal, family and societal perspectives.
How do we achieve this? I have broken it down into three critical steps:
Screening and prevention
Knowledge is vital, but the reality is that you do not know what you don’t know. Luckily – from a health perspective, screening aids early detection – which gives us higher chances of preventing chronic illnesses or even better chances of fighting diseases such as cancer in their early stages.
Know the signs
To answer my earlier question on why a less popular cancer is a lead killer? Unfortunately – as with many respiratory diseases like TB, lung cancer symptoms don't appear in the early stages. Patients with lung cancer often live for years without noticing any changes in their health. This means that by the time symptoms do occur, the cancer has most likely spread (metastasised) to other parts of the body.
There are a few signs to look out for if you want to be sure and check with your medical advisor. These include:
- A cough that does not go away or gets worse.
- Coughing up blood or rust-coloured sputum (spit or phlegm)
- Chest pain often worsens with deep breathing, coughing, or laughing.
- Hoarseness.
- Loss of appetite.
- Unexplained weight loss.
- Shortness of breath.
- Feeling tired or weak.
Be prepared
The chances of getting a dread disease may be higher than you think. But it is not the end of the world and certainly does not have to be the end of your life. There is a wealth of research on improving your health after a diagnosis. But before you get there, preparing for the possible reality is imperative. Proper medical treatment can be expensive because of the steep medical costs involved. In the case of a lung cancer diagnosis, the treatment needed depends on how far it has spread, as well as your medical history.
Cancer treatment can cost anything from R10 000 to R450 000 per year, depending on when the cancer is diagnosed and which treatments need to be done. Not many people have this kind of money lying around, and I am almost sure that those who do have other plans.
This is where dread disease cover comes in – helping you cover medical costs without having to dip into savings that you have set aside for your family’s generational wealth or using your monthly income, which is usually insufficient in some cases.
In a nutshell, the best way to ensure that you are protected from a financial perspective, regardless of the diagnosis, is to get dread disease cover and ensure you keep up with your premiums.
Knowing that you do not have to worry about the medical bill will give you the room to focus on recovery and the comfort of knowing that your family is financially secure during this time.
Suppose we consider the physical, mental, and financial implications that come with the lack of financial resources in the unfortunate event of a dread disease diagnosis. In that case, you must take a proactive approach to managing your health and finances. Failure to do so can result in stress, sickness, and debt.
Take the bold first step towards taking control of your health today by booking a health check with your doctor and a session with a financial advisor who can help you get the much-needed coverage!