Cancer body walks the life out of cancer cells

BABOKI KAYAWE
Staff Writer | Tuesday November 2, 2010 00:00

The third annual walk, which has become the traditional closing activity to the cancer awareness month, might have been about women in pink and heels and prizes for the highest heel and the most pink dressed, but it also saw improved male attendance and participation compared to the previous years.

Cancer survivor and CAB volunteer, Bontle Modige, said this year's stiletto walk turnout improved markedly, though she did not have the figures.

With the ultimate objective decreasing the number of breast cancer deaths, Modige said since its establishment in 1998, CAB had been pulling out all the stops to educate the nation on all forms of cancer.

'People are informed not only about breast cancer, but about other forms of cancer (as well),' Modige said. 'But I am afraid, lack of resources has prevented us from spreading the information beyond Gaborone'.

She said although a lot more needed to be done, men no longer viewed breast cancer as an entirely female disease as was the case before. The increased participation of men should add towards their increased change of perceptions, she added.

'I hope they spread the information and change other men's mindsets,' she said.According to the national cancer registry, breast cancer is the third most common solid malignancy after Kaposi sarcoma and cervical cancer in Botswana.

Over the past 10 years, a total of 11,363 people died of cancer in Botswana, 1,061 of which were breast cancer cases. Only 48 of the breast cancer deaths were of males.

Modige said next year's awareness activities are being planned for, with the airm of Francistown staging a stiletto walk. She advised everybody to go for breast cancer check ups and seek medical help in time.

'The first breast cancer activists were a series of women in the early and mid-1970s who challenged the routine use of the radical mastectomy, a highly disfiguring operation that involves the removal of the affected breast and the nearby chest wall muscles, for treating breast cancer,' said Modige.

'Building on the work of a few renegade surgeons plus the era's feminism, these women gradually got the medical profession to rethink radical surgery. Data eventually showed that smaller operations, such as lumpectomy accompanied by local radiation, were equally effective', writesMedlinePlus.