The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, is urging Parliament to promote policies that make breast cancer screening affordable and accessible.
This call is instructive because it shifts the fight against breast cancer from the annual pink-ribbon symbolism to concrete legislative and fiscal action.
Parliament’s role must extend beyond awareness creation to policy, legislation, oversight and be practical
He asked the critical questions that every woman in Ghana faces: “What happens if you discover a lump, and there is no access to a health centre?
What happens if you discover a lump and you cannot afford the price of treatment?”
Those two questions capture the tragedy of breast cancer care in Ghana.
For years, our approach to breast cancer has been heavily tilted towards awareness creation.
Every October, we are told to check our breasts, to look out for lumps, discharge, changes in size and skin texture.
Radio jingles play, articles feature in the Daily Graphic and its sister newspapers, corporate bodies organise walks, hospitals offer one-day free screenings, and social media is flooded with pink.
Then November comes, the pink fades, and the barriers remain.
The medical fact is clear and undisputed: breast cancer detected early is highly curable, with survival rates above 90 per cent.
Breast cancer detected late is often a death sentence.
In Ghana, studies show that over 70 per cent of cases are detected at Stage III and IV, when the disease has already spread.
That is not because Ghanaian women are not aware; it is because the system that should help them after awareness fails.
Mr Bagbin is right. What is the value of self-examination if the nearest health centre with a mammogram machine is 300 kilometres away?
What is the value of early detection if a biopsy costs GH¢800, a mammogram GH¢500, and a full course of treatment runs into tens of thousands of cedis that the National Health Insurance Scheme does not fully cover?
Today, breast cancer screening is largely opportunistic and out-of-pocket.
Mammography services are concentrated in Accra, Kumasi and a few regional capitals, mostly in private facilities.
Public hospitals lack functional machines, and where they exist, they have often broken down.
The Korle Klottey Municipal Health Directorate, which co-organised yesterday’s programme with Parliament, can counsel, but can it provide affordable mammograms for all market women in its municipality? No.
The cost barrier is even more brutal.
While clinical breast examination by a nurse may be free, the confirmatory investigations are not. Ultrasound, mammography, histopathology, receptor status tests, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy all require payment.
For many women, especially in rural Ghana, finding a lump is the beginning of a financial catastrophe that ends in abandonment of treatment, resort to herbal concoctions, and death.
If Parliament wants to be relevant in this fight, it must legislate access.
Parliament must push for the inclusion of comprehensive breast cancer screening and early treatment in the NHIS benefits package.
Currently, NHIS covers cervical cancer screening to some extent but breast cancer diagnostic and treatment coverage is limited and often not honoured at the facility level.
With the Finance Minister announcing that GH¢24.8 billion has been released to statutory funds, including NHIS and the Ghana Medical Trust Fund this year, this is the moment to earmark funds specifically for non-communicable diseases such as breast cancer.
Free screening once a year for women over 35 is not beyond the country’s means.
Second, Parliament through its Health and Finance Committees must exercise oversight to ensure that every regional hospital and selected district hospitals are equipped with functional mammography and breast ultrasound machines, with trained radiologists and technicians.
It is unacceptable that in 2026, a country of 33 million has less than 20 public mammogram machines working at any time.
Finally, the Daily Graphic believes the fight must address stigma and male involvement.
Breast cancer is often seen as a curse, and women hide it for fear of being abandoned by their husbands.
Parliamentarians, as community leaders, must lead education that breast cancer is not spiritual, that mastectomy does not make a woman less of a woman, and that men can also get breast cancer.
The Speaker has thrown the challenge to his own House.
It is time for Parliament to move from pink ribbons and speeches to the hard work of passing the budget lines, the laws and the oversight that will ensure that when a woman in Pusiga, Sefwi or Ada discovers a lump, she can find a facility, and be able to afford the treatment in order to be alive.
That is how we turn “Early detection, better outcomes” from a theme into a lived reality for Ghanaian women and girls.
