Med school on breast cancer awareness

By GELINDE NAREKINE
IN a global effort to raise awareness on breast cancer, October has been designated as the Pink Month.
It is the month where efforts are made to effectively address issues relating to prevention, detection, and management of breast cancer. Thus, efforts to educate those concerned about the disease are collectively echoed across the globe.
During this month, supporters of cancer fighters sum up their efforts in raising worldwide awareness, improving education, and catalysing personal and government commitment and actions. Through this drive, cancer fighters reimagine a world where access to life-saving treatment and care is equally available, and that millions of breast cancer deaths are prevented.
In October 2022, individuals, organisations, and academic institutions, came out public to show support and raise the spirit of cancer fighters the world over. The School of Medicine and Health Sciences also had its representation. Oct 26, 2022 was observed as a pink day at the UPNG Taurama Campus in support of this global movement.
Staff and students were encouraged to wear pink on that day – pink clothes, pink accessories, pink everything. A handful of staff – academic, admin, and technical – turned up in pink. They took absolute pride in being part of a global awareness drive, on a disease that requires every person to be the voice that is needed.
Breast cancer can occur in both men and women, but it is most common in women. There are many factors that increase the risk of developing breast cancer. These may include advanced age (55 years and over), positive family history and genetic predisposition (if any first-degree relatives were diagnosed with breast cancer due to genetic factors and not due to other reasons), and lifestyle habits including alcoholism and smoking. Other risks include lack of exercise, not breastfeeding, obesity, radiation or hormone therapy, use of hormonal contraceptives, or simply being exposed to radiation at an early age – may also lead to cancerous development.
At the cellular level, breast cancer develops due to uncontrollable and abnormal changes in the functions or growth of the cells forming breast tissue. These changes transform these cells into cancerous cells that have the ability to spread. There are several types, and the most common of these types is known as ductal carcinoma in situ. This type of cancer was named that way because it starts inside the milk ducts. It accounts for about 90 per cent of breast cancer cases in the world.
Untreated breast cancer can lead to some serious complications such as ulceration and inflammation in the skin. Inside the breast, cancerous cells can multiply and spread to the lymph nodes and other neighbouring tissues. This further increases the risk of cancer spreading to other vital organs in the body, such as the brain, liver, and lungs, which can affect the functions of these organs.
This may subsequently lead to severe deterioration of the patient’s health, and eventual death, in advanced stage of the disease.
Studies have shown that, one in eight women is at risk of developing breast cancer at some point in her life. It kills more than 500,000 women around the world every year. In resource-poor settings like Papua New Guinea, a majority of women with breast cancer are diagnosed at an advanced stage of disease, resulting in bad prognosis and low survival. I
t is alarming that in 2020 alone, more than 2 million cases were diagnosed, accounting for about 25 per cent of all cancer cases in women. In that year, breast cancer was responsible for more than 600,000 deaths, making it the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women.
Nevertheless, breast cancer is highly treatable if detected early through screening programmes. Raising the awareness of women about the warning signs and symptoms of the disease has positive outcomes. Thus, encouraging them to seek early medical advice could be an effective way of early detection. Good breast cancer awareness is associated with early diagnosis which leads to higher survival rates.
Studies have shown that 90 per cent of early stage breast cancers are curable, with treatments that often conserve the breast.
Furthermore, it has been shown that breast cancer awareness interventions are effective at increasing breast cancer awareness, knowledge and screening uptake. This could contribute to reducing late diagnosis, thus potentially reducing breast cancer mortality rates.
The need to create awareness on breast cancer disease through health education is of great importance. Such undertaking significantly improves women’s health, which would eventually lead to drastic reduction in the incidence of breast cancer in the future. The very basic, and yet, the most important and practical way to prevent breast cancer is through leading healthy lifestyle and breastfeeding. This is the kind of message that has to be reverberated over and over again.
We may be saying, this is too early to talk about an event that takes place in October. Well, the basic fact is that, it is never too early nor that late to talk about a disease that eats from inside out.
Thus, talking about it should, in one way or the other, be everyone’s business. We have to collectively echo our voices in support of a movement that thrives to create a world that is free from breast cancer for all girls, women, and even men.
Today, it is his mother, sister, or his wife. Tomorrow, it could be you, your mother, or your sister. Or it may happen to any other person very close to your heart.
Therefore, come October, let us all be the voice that is needed in addressing breast cancer. In so doing, we will surely, help those affected have better access to health and cancer services, no matter where they are born, grow, age, work, or live.

Source of information
Various credible sources were accessed to write this article. Though they are not listed here, all credit to the authors for their ingenuity, and for the wealth of information they make accessible for public use.

• Gelinde Narekine is a technical officer at the UPNG School of Medicine and Health Sciences.