Women, students get free breast screening
President of Breast Care International (BCI) and Chief Executive Officer of Peace and Love hospitals, Dr Beatrice Wiafe Addai, has commended the media for helping to disseminate information about breast cancer life-threatening disease.
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“The media, in retrospect, has proved a worthy partner, contributing immensely towards awareness creation, especially among our women with lower educational level. Though commendable, the enormity of the task ahead requires increased coverage and exposure; awareness creation about such an important disease as breast cancer should be a dynamic process,” she charged.
Six hundred and thirty students of the Trede Senior High School in the Atwima Kwanwoma District in the Ashanti Region benefitted from a free breast screening jointly organised and sponsored by BCI and DHL Global Forwarding.
The exercise is part of a national programme by the two institutions to sensitise the youth to the disease in a bid to cause a significant reduction in the rate at which the country’s women workforce report to the hospital.
Dr Wiafe Addai said this at a one-day exercise targeting the youth to follow all advice that would help to reduce the incidence of women repoerting the disease at its late stage.
She expressed concern about the influence of western culture on the youth, leading regrettably to some avoidable lifestyle diseases, and cautioned the students to be mindful of their eating habits. She also advised them to exercise regularly and desist from smoking and drinking.
Dr Wiafe Addai said the cure for breast cancer was dependent on early detection and promptly reporting to hospitals for treatment.
She encouraged the students to form “Breast Clubs” and sustain the breast cancer education among themselves to reduce the canker in the foreseeable future.
In a related development, hundreds of enthusiastic women thronged the Sefwi Asafo Catholic Parish Hall, where a BCI outreach team had pitched camp to educate the townsfolk and carried out another free breast screening exercise for the women.
The exercise attracted over a thousand women and was preceded with some exercises.
Dr Wiafe Addai reiterated her desire to sustain the breast cancer education in rural areas, where ignorance and poverty have denied many of the right to proper medical care.
Earlier, two survivors, themselves natives of the area, joined energetic Raheema, also a survivor, on the podium to assure the women that breast cancer was curable if suspicious lumps in the breast were reported on time for treatment.
The healthy-looking survivors said they were living testimonies to the effect that breast cancer was curable and encouraged the women to disabuse their minds of wrongly held notions about the disease being caused by witchcraft, among other superstitious beliefs.
