Meena Breast Cancer Foundation (MBCF) has made ready architectural design for breast cancer centres to be constructed across Senior High Schools and designated communities where it will be needful.
MBCF seeks to fight breast cancer year round and the establishment of the centres is part of strategies to intensify the fight against the disease.
The centres, according to the Executive Director of MBCF, Ibrahim Oppong Kwarteng are to provide medical assistance to financially deprived patients.
This he indicates would help reduce breast cancer mortality in Ghana, as it will “help establish an all-year campaign scheme for early detection, treatment, and palliative care”.
Mr Kwarteng revealed that design work on the centres has been completed with some lands acquired for immediate construction.
“Sod will be cut in two weeks’ time for the immediate commencement of the project. The centres would be closer to people in public places like markets, schools and places where it will be needed most. We hope this will reinforce breast cancer awareness and reach many people in rural areas,” he added.
He said breast cancer awareness campaigns should take place all year round, rather than limited to only October, as is now the case, adding: “Breast cancer exists year-round and so sensitization shouldn’t be restricted to the month of October.”
The Executive Director, who is also a PhD student at the University of Ghana’s Centre for Migration Studies, further said the MBCF would inaugurate its office complex this week to facilitate its operations.
According to him, since the inception of the breast cancer campaign in several communities, there has been growing interest in breast cancer screening activities.
MBCF mounted an aggressive breast screening and education campaign last October, starting with senior high schools, with Potsin T.I Ahmadiyya Senior High School in the Central Region the first institution to benefit followed by St. Mary’s Senior High School in Accra.
Religious bodies are not left out as the Kosoa Ahmadiyya Women Association has also had its share.
At the campaign at Potsin T.I AMASS Senior High School, where Mr Kwarteng’s wife, Amina Kwarteng, who died of breast cancer in 2022 in Turkey, attended, two students were diagnosed with breast cancer.
Mr Kwarteng appealed for support to enable MBCF to expand its breast cancer campaigns and charity operations to help prevent the disease and assist poor individuals suffering from it.
T.I AMASS has been chosen as the opening educational institution to benefit from the first five breast screening centres to be constructed in 2023.
The Headmistress of the school, Adams Zeinab underscored the importance of the screening centre.
“The facility will give the school and community members a great sigh of relief” and also ease the burden on the Polyclinic,” Mrs Zeinab said.
Expressing gratitude to MBCF, she added that it would fill the gap of a non-existing sick bay providing significant health services to both students and staff members.
She said it was the first time female members of the school benefitted from such a breast screening exercise, emphasizing: “The appreciation from both students and staff was unimaginable.”
Mrs Zeinab also stated the school’s preparedness to host the breast-screening centre, stating “as I am speaking, we even have three professional nurses who have been posted to the school from the Ghana Health Service.”
“The school enrollment is much higher than the town population,” she explained. “We are far over 2000, so establishing such a facility [breast screening centre] here will be a great relief.”
Breast Cancer is deadly
Breast cancer kills about 2,000 women in Ghana each year, according to health authorities, out of an estimated 4,000 new cases diagnosed at the country’s major health institutions.
Around 70 per cent of these patients have cancer that has advanced to the stage that nothing could be done to help them, leading to many of them dying.
The Meena Breast Cancer Foundation was founded on the vision of the late wife of Mr Kwarteng, Amina Oppong Kwarteng who succumbed to breast cancer whiles undergoing treatment.
Since its establishment months ago many breast cancer patients have received support to undergo treatment. The latest patient to get assistance, Abiba Abu was waiting to die because of the difficulty to seek medical attention.
Mrs Abu has been living with the disease for the past seven years and her husband is also down with a stroke.
They earned their living from doing charcoal business, which has collapsed because they are unable to keep the business going due to their ill health.
This has rendered their already fragile situation worse.
By Rudolph Nandi
