And while the medical team has assisted with the surgeries for many cancer patients, according to KHMH's oncologist, most diagnoses are made too late for the surgeries to help. Dr Ramon Yacab explained that there has been an alarming - but not necessarily surprising - increase in particular breast and colon cancers. He added though that most of the time, the patients are already at an advanced stage by the time they get to the hospital.

Dr Ramon Yacab, Medical Oncologist, KHMH
"Generally, if we put numbers into context, we have about 300-400 new cancer cases per year. Here at the KHMH, we're seeing roughly 300 cases per year. Everyday we have a new patient being diagnosed with cancer. If we have ten patients, only a few of them are surgical candidates, mostly because patients are coming in with advanced stages or stage 4 cancer. So in terms of how many patients need surgeries, generally around 10 to 20 over the course of a two month period."

Reporter:
"You said you guys are noticing an increase in breast and colon cancer, do you have any reasons that you are speculating that's causing this increase?"

Dr Ramon Yacab, Medical Oncologist, KHMH
"Generally, when we talk about specifically breast cancer, environmental factors do play a role. I cannot pinpoint what the cause is but certainly factors like weight increase, alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking play a role, especially in women, because we know that 99% of the cases are women and breast cancer to the most part are related to hormone exposure so even the use of oral extended contraceptives has been related to breast cancer. So there's multiple factors here and also we have an aging population, a growing population, so the numbers will increase, it is expected for Belize that the cases go from 400 per year to also 700 or 800 in the next ten years."

Reporter:
"And it's clear that people aren't coming for their regular check ups or checking themselves."

Dr Ramon Yacab, Medical Oncologist, KHMH
"Definitely, and that's telling us as a country, as a system, we're failing. Why? Most of our patients are coming in with stage 4 cancer. Breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, cervical cancer are all cancers that can be either prevented or detected early so that's just telling me or telling us as a country that screening is not something that we have embedded in our culture and it's something that we can change."

Reporter:
"Talk to me about the awareness efforts that are coming out of the KHMH to try and address that issue."

Dr Ramon Yacab, Medical Oncologist, KHMH
"What we do, we're starting at home, that's the first thing. We do know that cancer is there and we're starting with our personnel here at the hospital doing awareness and early detection, need to do that, but also going out as an institution, promoting cancer awareness with different entities, outside different companies. Going one on one with them, doing trainings, doing discussions, the intention here is to just talk about cancer, have a friendly conversation."

And while the medical team has assisted with the surgeries for many cancer patients, according to KHMH's oncologist, most diagnoses are made too late for the surgeries to help. Dr Ramon Yacab explained that there has been an alarming - but not necessarily surprising - increase in particular breast and colon cancers. He added though that most of the time, the patients are already at an advanced stage by the time they get to the hospital.