REDCARD BREAST CANCER
4
th July is designated World Cancer Day and on this day people from all over the world
put in their efforts to spread the Gospel according to Cancer. One of the forms of cancer that
keeps me awake at night is breast cancer. “In 2010, over 1,300,000 women died from breast
cancer globally, and 2,062 women were diagnosed with the disease in Ghana”. As horrifying as
these statistics may look, we can all put efforts together to make it less scary.
One important way of handling this is by Breast Self-Examination ( BSE). This is a
means of examining your own breasts to detect any abnormalities and reporting to the
appropriate health facility for prompt intervention. This helps to detect the disease, if present, at
an early stage and for that matter the necessary interventions will be put in place before the
disease advances to the deadly stages where you may have to lose your breast or more
importantly your life. As easy and less time-consuming as this examination is, many ladies (who
are more at risk than men) prefer to spend a lot of time in front of a mirror every morning
checking out themselves and turning to various gymnastic angles to appreciate what they have. I
am not against any of these but it will be sad if any lady does this but does not have time to
examine her breast which serves important purposes of which the aesthetic value is not on top of
the list.
I would therefore admonish our precious ladies to take Breast Self-Examination
seriously as it can save their lives.
To our gentlemen, I would say, please do not dismiss any issues or materials regarding
breast cancer like the proverbial crab who is not concerned about headaches; because unlike the
proverbial crab who can never have a headache, men have a 1 in 1000 chance of developing
breast cancer and in such situations the mortality is higher because men do not assume that they
can have breast cancer and therefore do not suspect it until they probably have one foot in the
grave.
To all of us who are reading let us do our best to examine ourselves regularly and not
have the notion that not knowing about your condition is better because not knowing has not
been proven to stop the growth of cancerous cells.
In doing my part I would like to admonish you to take all you have read seriously and I
would also like to introduce to you an android application soon to hit play store, REDCARD
BREASTCANCER, an application that teaches you about Breast Self- Examination, early
warning signs of breast cancer and more.
In doing your part, do your best to download the app when it hits play store, learn how to
examine your own breasts and teach others and also join us on Facebook to name and shame
breast cancer. TAKE SOME FEW MINUTES TO TELL A FRIEND THAT BREAST SELFEXAMINATION
CAN SAVE HIS OR HER LIFE.
I believe that if we all contribute our quota, the scary statistics on breast cancer in Ghana
can be reduced drastically over a period of time. Let us show a REDCARD to
BREASTCANCER.
By:
KYEI BAFFOUR Prince
Email: princekyeibaffour@yahoo.com