Buea Regional Hospital to launch Pink Month for cancer awareness

Buea Regional Hospital will launch a Pink Month campaign on October 17, 2023. The campaign will offer women the opportunity to receive free screenings for breast and cervical cancer, which will benefit their health.

This comes at a time when statistics show that both breast and cervical cancer are increasing at an alarming rate in Cameroon. The Global Cancer Observatory (Globocan) predicts that breast cancer will affect 1 in 8 women, and tragically, breast cancer claims the life of a woman somewhere in the world every 50 seconds.

Globocan’s publicly available statistics show that the mortality rate for breast cancer in Cameroon was 16% in 2020, while the mortality rate for cervical cancer was 13.5%.

Both males and females detected 21% of new breast cancer cases in that particular year. Females recorded 12,235 new cases, and males detected 8,510 new cases, resulting in a total of 20,745 new cases. An estimated population of 26,545,864 people is the basis for these numbers.

The statistics show that breast cancer has a cumulative risk of 4.12, while cervical cancer has a risk of 3.61.

They reported the cumulative risk for mortality as 2.23 for cancer and 2.67 for cervical cancer.

Regional hospitals throughout the region organise campaigns in Cameroon every year. These campaigns aim to sensitise and provide free screenings to women.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) designates Pink Month as a dedicated period to raise awareness about breast and cervical cancer. During this time, we make efforts to educate individuals about the disease, including early identification and the signs and symptoms associated with it.

According to the reports, people have celebrated the practice annually in October for over 90 years.

Breast and cervical cancer primarily affect women and are the leading and most dangerous forms of cancer. In most cases, the disease is less likely to be contracted by men.

Women face a risk of developing other types of cancer, including lung and bronchus cancer, colon and rectal cancer, and uterine cancer, in addition to breast and cervical cancer.