Several screened for breast, cervical and prostate cancer

Oct 09, 2017 News

– at Linden Hospital Complex medical outreach

A medical outreach was on Saturday hosted by the Linden Hospital Complex (LHC)
It was a collaborative effort between the Ministry of Public Health, the GPHC, the Cancer Institute, the LHC and the Giving Hope Foundation.
Approximately 50 persons were screened and tested for breast, cervical and prostate cancer according to reports.
This response was deemed favourable by the team, and persons who were able to access the services commended the initiative.
The outreach is just one, of many, that is planned for Cancer Awareness Month, which is presently being observed.
Persons were exposed to breast cancer sensitisation and examinations, pap smears and the VIA or Visual Inspection Procedure using ascetic acid.
The LHC advises that every Friday, pap smears and VIA screenings are done at the facility.
A breast clinic is also held on the same day from eight in the morning.
The clinic, which was established in January last year, and is headed by Dr. Elena Arangueren, has an average of fifteen persons attending every Friday.
Information disseminated by the Public Health Ministry earlier this year revealed that Guyana has the highest incidence of cancer-related mortality when compared to the Caribbean Region.
According to the Ministry’s data, Guyana ranks highest with an incidence rate of 46.9 percent and a mortality rate of 21.0 per 100,000 persons with cervical cancer alone, killing an estimated 100 women every year, making it the leading cause of cancer mortality among local women.
The Ministry has noted that the global state of affairs is farther reaching with some 530,000 new cases of cervical cancer detected annually and killing approximately 266,000 women or 50.2 per cent of the total cancer victims.
Although breast cancer cases have reportedly started to dwindle, there is still need to continue the fight against this disease. This, according to Dr. Persaud, will require that both men and women seek to be screened regularly.
But according to WHO, the only breast cancer screening method that has proved to be effective is mammography screening. However, it noted that “Mammography screening is very costly and is cost-effective and feasible in countries with good health infrastructure that can afford long-term organised population-based screening programmes.”
In fact, WHO has revealed that population-based cancer screening is a much more complex public health undertaking than early diagnosis. It noted that early diagnosis is usually cost-effective when done in the context of high-standard programmes that target all the population at risk in a given geographical area with high specific cancer burden.
However, WHO has suggested that low-cost screening approaches, such as clinical breast examination, could be implemented in limited resource settings when the necessary evidence from studies becomes available.
WHO has also proposed that “Many low and middle-income countries that face the double burden of cervical and breast cancer need to implement combined cost-effective and affordable interventions to tackle these highly preventable diseases.”
According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], approximately 200,000 women in the United States alone are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. About 40,000 of these victims are estimated to die as a result of the disease annually, the CDC has noted.
According to local Cancer Specialist, Dr. Surendra Persaud, while the majority of breast cancer victims are women, males are also susceptible.

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