October each year is marked as Breast Cancer Awareness Month globally to help increase attention and support for awareness, early diagnoses, and treatment as well as palliative care for women with breast cancer.
It is in light of this that a Consultant Radiologist at the University of Ghana Medical School, Dr. Edmond Brakohiapa is calling for more encouragement and education for women on the need to screen their breasts routinely in order to detect the disease at a treatable stage before it becomes deadly.
Breast cancer since 1930 has become a rising global phenomenon with statistics, according to the World Health organization, last year alone, some 2.3 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer and out of the number, 685,000 of the women died from the condition.
Data from the WHO indicates that its incidence has increased in the last six years by more than 23 percent.
A report by the National Cancer Steering Committee indicated that an analysis of autopsy records over a 10-year period in the Department of Pathology, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), showed that the leading cancer deaths in females is breast cancer, followed by cervix, hematopoietic organs, liver, stomach and colorectal cancer.
According to Dr. Brakohiapa, even though risk factors like excessive alcohol intake, smoking, genetic mutation and family history increases a woman’s chance of getting breast cancer, the number one risk factor is being a woman.
“You can get people as young as 18 years still in school, 22 years still about starting work and they come out with breast cancers.”
He attributed the westernization of lives including the eating of fatty foods, excessive protein and inactiveness as part of the major contributing factors of breast cancer.
He said there is the need to intensify education on the disease and let people know that the key is to detect it early by doing self-breast examination regularly.
This he explains will help avert the increment of the national figures on breast cancer.
Source: ATLFMNEWS
