RedCard breast cancer

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