October is here, a month dedicated to Breast Cancer Awareness. The Breast Cancer Awareness Month is marked in countries across the world every October to help increase attention and support for the awareness, early detection and treatment as well as palliative care of this disease.
3Foundation, the Corporate Social Responsibility unit of Ghana’s leading media conglomerate, Media General has partnered with Media General’s lifestyle radio brand, 3FM and the Twellium Foundation to launch a breast cancer campaign dubbed “Save Our Breast”.
As part of the campaign, there will be free breast screening at the forecourt of TV3 Network on October 14, Accra Metropolitan Assembly office complex on October 15 and Tema Metropolitan Assembly on October 16.
In addition to the free breast screening at the designated areas to be undertaken by Imah International Maritime hospital, the one-month campaign will end with a health walk through selected principal streets in Accra on Saturday, October 31, 2020.
Speaking about the motivation for the campaign, the assigned Medical Resource for the campaign, Dr. Josephine Awotwe Quarcoo, stated that “one of the challenges we have with breast cancer is ignorance. That is actually worsening the problems associated with breast cancer and the flight of patients. It is important for people to know that there is cure for breast cancer when diagnosed early.”
Commenting on the campaign, the Chief Operating Officer of the Media General Group, Winfred Kingsley Afful said “this is a lot more than just a month-long education campaign and screening exercises.
Importantly, we are going to screen over 1,500 men and women for free as well as exposing many people to what they need to know and do. Breast cancer is the most frequent cancer amongst women and we want men and women to pay greater attention to this.”
According to Globocan 2012, there are about 1.7 million new cases and 522,000 deaths from breast cancer each year. In low- and middle-income countries the incidence has been rising steadily due to increased life expectancy, changing reproductive patterns (such as later age at first childbirth and less breast-feeding), and the adoption of western lifestyles.
