What you need to know about Breast Cancer

AMYLINE CHING
Manila Bulletin

With lungs and livers, blood pressures and sugar levels filling up everybody’s health worries, nobody ever thought to look elsewhere, not until it becomes a necessity… a necessity for survival.


From virtual obscurity in the last decades, breast cancer has now earned top marks in cancer surveys. In the Philippines, Breast cancer is the leading form of cancer among women. In 2007, the numbers are expected to surge up even more, with a projected occurrence of 14,083 new cases and about 6,357 deaths.


And once detected on the later stages, there is nothing that medical experts can do. In fact, the average survival rate of cancer patients is about 60 months and only about 32.38 percent of them will survive the 10th year.


The best way to fight breast cancer is still to create awareness. The more women become aware of what they can be facing in the future, the better they can cope with it. This is the reason why breast cancer advocates like the Philippine Foundation for Breast Cancer, Incorporated (PFBCI) have launched information campaigns and talks.


But while information may make a huge difference and can even save a life, the wrong one can seriously hamper these efforts, creating the wrong perception about the problem. Unfortunately, myths and incorrect assumptions about breast cancer are already ingrained in the minds of people. Some are even so ingrained that people, women, have already considered them as facts.


In an effort to help dispel these myths and provide the right information to people, PFBCI partnered with Philippine Wacoal Corporation to educate Filipino women on the dangers, risks and predisposing factors of breast cancer through a series of seminars, aptly tagged, "Keep Abreast Cancer Awareness Seminar."


The seminars ran on three Saturdays of October at the Asian Institute of Management and at the Philippine Stock Exchange. There, participants learned the basics of the problem, its prevalence and early signs. They were taught how to conduct Breast Self-examination, which they can regularly do before going to sleep.