Breast Cancer Awareness Month launched

The Korle Bu Teaching Hospital has launched the Breast Cancer Awareness Month to intensify awareness of the disease and also encourage more women to conduct regular self-examination of their breasts for the early detection and treatment of breast cancer.

At the launch of the programme in Accra, a radiation oncologist at the hospital, Dr Naa Adorkor Aryeetey, cautioned patients against the habit of reporting to hospital only when the disease had reached a critical stage.

“Most people come with advanced, often foul-smelling breasts to our hospitals and this needs to change,” she said.

The event, which was on the theme: “You can beat breast cancer; many have survived it”, was sponsored by Stanbic Bank.

Misconceptions

Debunking misconceptions about the treatment offered at the hospital, Dr Aryeetey said chemotherapy and radiotherapy used in the treatment process did not poison the body, adding that the side effects were reversible.

She said it was also not true that an entire diseased breast would be cut off when a patient went for treatment, saying treatment depended on the stage the disease had reached.

“Early breast cancer is usually not painful and early breast cancer can be removed without removing the whole breast. Life may not go back to the normal you knew.

Likely, you will find a new normal life which will bear the scars of treatment that you received, but also one that shows that you have reached the finished line,” she said.

Awareness month

The Parish Priest of the Christ the King Catholic Church, Rev. Fr Andrew Campbell, who launched the programme, said statistics from the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital indicated that 90 per cent of women who reported early with breast diseases were treated successfully, while those who came in late did not get the same result.

He said since God worked through doctors, it was important for patients to seek early treatment at hospitals to reduce their risk of getting breast cancer.

A general surgeon at the hospital, Dr Josephine Nsaful, said the awareness campaign started three years ago.

“For the past two years, we have collaborated with partner hospitals and diagnostic centres to do mammograms, conducted free breast screening and also educated women on breast cancer during the awareness month in October every year,” she said.

The Chief Executive Officer of the hospital, Dr Daniel Asare, said a lot was being done to fight the disease, and that some expensive drugs for the treatment of the disease had been put on the National Health Insurance Scheme.

“We want to see the cancer early, detect it early, diagnose it early and treat it early and prevent other people from getting it,” he added.

A survivor of breast cancer, Ms Priscilla Eningful, said: “My condition was between stages one and two when I started the treatment.

I had confidence in the people who took care of me and an unshaken faith in God.”