In honour of the late Sir Terepai Maoate, Dr Joe Williams spoke at length about prostate cancer at yesterday’s annual health conference.

Introduced by session chair Dr Teariki ‘Kiki’ Maoate as a ”giant“ in the Cook Islands – one who hardly warrants an introduction – Dr Williams told the conference that Sir Terepai had specifically asked him to deliver his prostate cancer presentation.

Prostate cancer is a topic Dr Williams has explored extensively over the years, one that hit close to home for Sir Terepai.

”When he (Papa Pai) was in Auckland a month ago he said to me, ‘Would you please give that presentation on prostate cancer? I’ll be there’. And he said, ‘My friend, it’s going to be my last Cook Islands conference so give that presentation and I’ll be there’.“

Unfortunately he passed away the morning Dr Williams arrived in Rarotonga.

”I want to pause for a moment and pay tribute to this great Cook Islander,“ Dr Williams said, and asked the auditorium to stand and observe a moment of silence.

”We all remember him as one of the great sons of this country. This presentation is in his memory,“ he said before beginning his presentation.

Dr Williams talked about Sir Terepai’s passion for health and medicine.

”He was a huge person in the field of politics. He was a former prime minister, a former deputy prime minister, a former minister of health and a former minister of financeThere’s something about doctors in the Cook Islands. It’s the only country in the world where you have doctors that became prime ministers. It began with Sir Thomas Davis, then followed Sir Pupuke Robatithen myself, then Sir Terepai and then Dr Robert Woonton.“

He spoke about Sir Terepai’s work as a doctor in Manihiki and Aitutaki, and his recent involvement with the Cook Islands Prostate Foundation as its founder and first president.

He talked of his personal collaboration with Dr Maoate in 1968 on eradicating the Aitutaki filariasis, which the World Health Organisation eventually adopted as a model for the global elimination of lymphatic filariasis. As a result, similar programmes were conducted in French Polynesia and Samoa.

Dr Williams then changed tune and spoke about prostate cancer, which he said in New Zealand affects 3000 men annually and kills 600. Statistics are not available for Pacific communities.

He encouraged all Cook Islands men to be screened for prostate cancer, which is difficult to detect in stage two but by stage four difficult to control or cure.

The key is that it is preventable if detected early enough.

Dr Williams noted that prostate cancer is more prominent in men over the age of 70.

Symptoms include frequent urination, nocturia (frequent urination at night), blood in the urine, difficulty starting to urinate and retention. However, those symptoms can also be caused by other conditions, including trauma.

Doctors test for levels of an enzyme that is elevated in situations of prostate cancer, and have found that in New Zealand one in nine men is affected, and that in the Pacific one in seven men is at risk of contracting prostate cancer.

Screening reduces prostate cancer by 15 percent and the death rate by 33 percent, Dr Williams said.

He urged all men over 40 to be tested – those between 40 and 49 to be tested biennially, and those over 50 annually.

”I hope you do this for me, every man in the Cooks over the age of 40.“

Dr Stuart Gowland followed with his own research, warning of the risks and high costs associated with mass screening. He encouraged men of the appropriate age to be screened, rather than all men.