Breast Cancer Awareness Month has been celebrated in countries across the world every October for the last 90 years.
The goal of breast cancer awareness is to educate women about the importance of diagnosing cancer at early stages when treatment is easier and outcome is better.
On this note, a medical Director at the Doctors In-Service Health Center, Dr. Andrew Herzuah has underscored the importance of undergoing breast cancer screening for early detection among women and men.
In an interview on the Mid Morning Lounge on Beach FM, Dr. Herzuah pointed out the causes of breast cancer, while backing it with statistics.
According to Dr. Herzuah, everyone is at risk of getting breast cancer although the disease is centered mainly around 99% of women and only 1% of men.
“We have some very tiny percentage of men also having breast cancer but mainly we focus on the women because they form the majority of the cases that we see. Everyone is at risk but the focus is more on the females”, he said.
Ongoing research has pointed out a few theories to the causes of breast cancer; some are controllable while others are uncontrollable.
Dr. Herzuah acclaimed that females stand a higher chance of getting breast cancer and thus must seek early detection to prevent late treatment.
He further mentions a myriad of lifestyle, hormonal, environmental, as well as genetic factors also causing breast cancer.
“The fact that you are female puts you at risk and also the fact that you are aging put you at risk. And then we have what we call early menarche and in the same vain we talk about late menopause. Then we have the genetic factors. By and large, these are the factors; there are a few others like obesity, alcohol and then hormone replacement therapy”.
Statistically, the World Health Organization (W.H.O) estimated that in 2020, about 2.3 million people were diagnosed with breast cancer and out of that number, about 685,000 died of breast cancer within that same year
Dr. Herzuah asserts that in Ghana about 4000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer annually.
“The unfortunate thing is that most of them report late and out of these 4000, about half of them die. It’s not really a good thing that’s why this breast cancer awareness is very important”.
Dr. Herzuah further acclaimed to the fact that since the start of the breast cancer awareness initiative, people are have now been reporting early as well as doing self screenings.
“They are testing themselves, they are looking at the signs, they are reporting early and all of that so we hope that with time the statistics will be kinder. The important thing is to create the awareness and to let them know the cause and the risk factors.”
