New York — Women and Children Committee, Breast Cancer Medical Mission of the Anambra State Association in the United States has emphasized the need for the Anambra State Government to increase access to quality healthcare for all women by establishing more breast cancer centers that are fully equipped and staffed with trained personnel, stressing that it should also provide free and subsidized diagnostic healthcare services.

The Group, through its chairperson, Dr. (Mrs) Anthonia Uche Umeh also charged President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to focus part of his attention on women by establishing functional mammography centres in all parts of the country in order to combat breast cancer, a disease that has claimed the lives of many women.

The ASA, USA Women and Children Committee which crowned its efforts of 2010 with the donation of two mammography units, one stationed in Awka and the other in Onitsha General Hospital also charged the Anambra State Government on the sustainability of the mammography unit's projects to assure the delivery of the critical services to the people at the lowest cost.

Dr (Mrs.) A. Uche Umeh stressed that some surgical treatments should often be followed by Radiotherapy to kill the remaining cancer cells, and that the paucity of radiotherapy centers in Nigeria leads to long waiting list and the inconveniences involved often prevent the patients from keeping such medical appointments to complete the therapeutic course.

Uche Umeh, the DSG, Igbo World Assembly, Women and Children Institute also advised the Federal Government to provide Radiotherapy in the Southeastern States of Nigeria.

She continued that at the end of the Breast Cancer Awareness Medical Mission which was held between August 9 - 18, over eight thousand women were seen by the physicians, adding that fifty two of them had abnormal breast clinical examinations and were referred to their Breast Surgeons and Radiologists stationed at NAUTH for mammographic screenings, biopsies, fine needle aspirations, pathology, lumpectomy or mastectomy.

Umeh told our Correspondent that the 2010 ASA USA Women and Children Committee and NAUTH, Nnewi Sponsored Mammography Services in Anambra State in collaboration with the Director of Mammography from Washington Radiology Associates, Washington D.C, Dr Julianne Greenberg, Consultant Radiologist UNTH, Enugu, Dr P.C.N Okere, and Consultant Radiologist, Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Zaria, Dr Hamidu U.

While appreciating the efforts of all the collaborators of the 2010 ASA USA Women and Children Committee Breast Cancer Awareness Initiatives, the Committee's chairperson said First Lady of Anambra State, Mrs. Margaret Peter Obi was advancing the awareness level of their women about the prevalence of breast cancer.