One disease of which awareness has been created in recent decades is breast cancer.
The first organised effort to bring widespread attention to breast cancer occurred as a weeklong event in the United States in October 1985.
The event was organised by the American Cancer Society and the Imperial Chemical Industries Pharmaceuticals, which later became part of AstraZeneca PLC, a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company headquartered in Cambridge, England.
Thereafter, countries around the globe have adopted October as the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and some organisations have taken it upon themselves to hold their own special programmes to support the breast cancer awareness creation.
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For instance, the idea of the pink colour being associated with breast cancer awareness originated from the corridors of the Self magazine in the United States, in 1991/92.
Then as recently as 2021, the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched its Global Breast Cancer Initiative (GBCI) to help reduce the disease's mortality rates by 2.5 per cent annually to save 2.5 million lives by 2040 through three key pillars of action on health promotion for early detection; timely diagnosis; and comprehensive breast cancer management.
Coming back home to Ghana, there are various organisations, including the Ghana Health Service (GHS), creating breast cancer awareness in the bid to help beat the disease.
The efforts notwithstanding, the disease appears to be growing in number.
The WHO says breast cancer is the most common cancer globally with around 2.3 million new cases occurring every year.
For Ghana, the GHS announces that nearly 5000 cases are recorded annually, with the 2022 cases reaching 5,026.
What is sad about the situation is that of the number, approximately 50 per cent die.
For instance, 2,369 out of the 2022 figure of 5,026 died.
Stigma and late detection are blamed for the unfortunate situation.
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It is sadder that in our part of the world certain diseases are stigmatised to the extent that patients feel alienated from their various communities.
Community members think those diseases are self-inflicted and so sufferers must be left to their fate.
In such an atmosphere, superstition is also alluded to such that even assistance to be given patients to seek medical care is denied because their suffering is spiritual.
In that case, some of the people who are even fairly aware of the disease lose the boldness to report to the hospitals for the fear that others would hear about their cases and spread the information for them to suffer stigmatisation.
In the case of men, the case is more dangerous because breast cancer has been held as women's disease for decades since it is mostly diagnosed among women.
It is therefore educative that there is now scientific evidence that men too suffer breast cancer.
The fact that not all breast cancer patients die means there is hope to fight or beat the disease, so both males and females, particularly women in the risk age bracket of 40 to 49 years, and, of course all adults, must follow the recommendations given by health experts, including regular mammograms, to mitigate the risk.
It is the hope of The Ghanaian Times that henceforth, all adults, both male and
female, would consider themselves as being at risk of breast cancer and help with its awareness all-year long, not only in October.
This would surely cause early detection and stop stigmatisation
