A woman who went viral in 2019 as NGOs solicited funds for her cancer treatment, has now been discovered not to have had cancer.
Serah Shimenenge Yugh was diagnosed with Stage 1 invasive ductal carcinoma of the left breast at age of 33 on 21st August, 2017.
By 2019, Serah’s story had gone viral and caught the attention of health minister, Osagie Ehanire, who said the federal government is planning to roll out a cancer treatment fund to reduce the burden of treating cancer.
He said this at the National Health Dialogue that held in October 2019 in Abuja.
Back in 2019 when NGOs were soliciting funds for Serah’s expensive “cancer” treatment
However, after eight sessions of chemotherapy, 25 rounds of radiotherapy and a single mastectomy on her left breast, Ms Hugh has now discovered that she didn’t have cancer at all and the hospital misdiagnosed her, cutting her breast for nothing.
Her plight began when she started losing weight while undergoing her National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) assignment in Ekiti State. She went to the hospital seeking a solution but found none. Tests were done but results didn’t point to anything.
While self-examining her breasts in 2017, she felt a tiny lump on her left breast. This bothered her so much that she first went to the Federal Medical Centre, Makurdi before going to the Benue State University Teaching Hospital at her sister’s suggestion. What was supposed to be a simple test developed into a three-year-long back and forth with the hospital.
The hospital carried out three tests on Serah. As she was waiting for the result of the third test, the hospital went on an industrial strike in September 2017 and by the time the strike was called off in January 2018, she had undergone five rounds of chemotherapy.
Her doctor, Dr. Stephen Atokolo, had urged her to do a mastectomy to quickly stop the spread of what they suspected could be cancer.
She did the surgery but when the third test result was out, the histopathology diagnosis was Fibroadenoma. Serah Yugh did not have cancer.
— questions she had been asking since September 2017 when a mastectomy was performed on her.
“I don’t want others to fall victim because I know it will not end just with me alone,” she said, explaining why she’s been fighting the misdiagnosis made on her.
Even though she fears for her life and the repercussion her speaking up might bring to her, she wants an official apology from the Benue State University Teaching Hospital.
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