The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) on Monday 28th October, 2019 organized a Breast Cancer screening and sensitization exercise for its female Staff at the FDA Head Office.
October is marked globally as Breast Cancer Awareness Month and is used to increase awareness on the need for early screening, diagnosis, and treatment. Breast Cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide.
A Family Physician Specialist of the Family Medical Department at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital Dr. Annan Ayongo in a presentation at the event said early screening and diagnosis are key to breast cancer control.
According to her, if the cancer is detected early and treatment resumed on time, there is a good chance that breast cancer can be cured.
She further stated that the chances of success of curative treatment reduce when breast cancer is detected at a later stage.
Early treatment improves the quality of life of a patient and delays disease progression while supportive and palliative care should be readily available.
Staff of FDA were sensitized on the various types of breast examination such as self examination exercise, clinical breast examination and radiological breast examination.
Nurses who took the staff through the examination process told the female staff, self breast examination should be a monthly exercise to help ladies identify changes in their breast and in early detection of abnormalities.
Dr. Annan Ayongo urged all women to do monthly breast examination from 5 to 7 days after their menstrual period stating that a yearly clinical breast examination at any health facility is mandatory for ladies between the ages of 20 to 40.
The participants were advised to adopt healthy lifestyles such as consuming more fruits and vegetables, experiencing more minutes of relaxation daily, maintaining not more than 30 Body Mass Index, engaging in at least 150 minutes of exercise weekly and desisting from smoking as well as second hand smoking.
The participants were finally taken through the clinical breast screening exercise. In all, a total of about 200 staff were screened.
Story by: Sena Nombo/Radiogoldlive.com
