Omoro district local council has approved the giveaway of 5-acres of land for the construction of a Regional Cancer Hospital.
Earlier on, the district had offered a 4acre piece of land at Koro Sub County Headquarters, about 4kms along the Gulu- Kampala road.
However, on Monday, Douglas Peter Okello, the Omoro District Local Council V Chairperson said the facility will now be built on the land where Bobi Health Centre III is located.
According to Okello, the land in Koro is too small to accommodate the cancer hospital.
The decision to allocate the land was agreed upon by the district council after a request from Gulu Regional Referral Hospital, Uganda Cancer Institute and Ministry of Health three years ago.
The cancer hospital in Omoro will be one of the four regional cancer centers the government plans to establish across the country.
The other centers will be in Arua, Mbarara and Mbale, according to a plan unveiled last year by the Ministry of Health.
Statistics from Uganda Cancer Institute indicate that the disease kills about 47,000 Ugandans annually.
The country, according to the Cancer Institute, registers 60,000 new cases of cancer per year.
Eight out of every 10 newly diagnosed cancer patients die within a year due to late diagnosis and inappropriate treatment, a report by the Cancer Institute said.
