Greenland candidate campaigns for better healthcare after beating cancer in Denmark

By Tom Little

NUUK (Reuters) -As Greenland's general election approaches, a candidate campaigns for access to better healthcare on the vast island, recounting his personal journey of beating cancer after having to travel to Denmark from a remote town to undergo treatment.

"It's always about the budget ... I want to have the human before the economy or the budget," Justus Hansen, 57, a candidate for Greenland's centre-right Demokraatit party said.

While independence has taken centre stage in Greenland's election debate after renewed U.S. interest in the island, healthcare has long been a core issue, with vast distances and shortage of staff making it costly and difficult to give Greenlanders access to the care they need.

Hansen said he went to the hospital in his hometown of Tasiilaq on the eastern coast of Greenland, after feeling exhausted.

He was sent home after an initial consultation, he said, and when he returned after a week's time, he insisted on having his blood sample taken, which revealed a high level of infection.

"I have lost a lot of my own friends and family to cancer because they get diagnosed too late," Hansen said.

He was eventually sent to Nuuk from Tasiilaq - a journey across the ice cap of more than 680 kilometres (423 miles), involving travel by plane and helicopter - as the capital is the only place where Greenlanders can get a CT scan.

There, in January last year, he was diagnosed with renal cancer. "I felt terrified. It's like a death sentence for me because my own mother died of cancer," he said.

Hansen said he had to wait six weeks in Greenland after being diagnosed with cancer before he could go to Denmark for treatment.

Hansen spent three months in Copenhagen for his first treatment, and returned to Denmark for two further periods of two months respectively to receive treatment after he was diagnosed with lung cancer in October.

Now, free of cancer, his experiences have fuelled his campaign for more doctors in Greenland's regional hospitals, improved healthcare in remote areas, and the installation of CT scanners in every regional hospital.

While Hansen feels strongly about Greenland becoming independent, he is cautious about a swift transition.

"We have to have more educated people," he said. "Also, the economy will have to be much stronger than it is today before we can even talk about independence."

(Reporting by Tom Little in Nuuk, writing by Louise Breusch Rasmussen and Isabelle Yr Carlsson, Editing by Louise Heavens)