KUWAIT CITY, Oct 4: The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Cancer Awareness National Campaign (CAN) Dr. Khaled Al-Saleh announced the launch of the activities of the breast cancer awareness campaign under the auspices of the Minister of Health, Dr. Khaled Al- Saeed, reports Al-Qabas daily. Al-Saleh added during a press conference, “This year, we renew our call for our mothers and daughters to pay attention to the periodic examination, which has proven its importance in detecting tumor infection at an early stage, indicating that early diagnosis saves life, and breast cancer is one of the curable cancers. If it is detected in its early stages, this can be done using the most effective means, which is a mammogram, as this does not require any woman in the age of forty and over, except to make a decision and conduct an examination to avoid any delay in the event of any abnormal changes in her body.

Al-Saleh pointed out that the culture of awareness among women helps the infected women in the early stages and the treatment achieves positive results with cure rates more than 90%, and without the need to remove the affected organ in most cases. He noted that breast cancer is the most prevalent among women. It ranked first in the number of sicknesses globally, and the number in 2020 reached about 2.3 million (based on the World Health Organization report), which represents 24.2% of the total tumors in women in the world, and ranks first among women in Kuwait.

He added, that according to the 2018 Cancer Center’s Cancer Registry, the number of breast cancer cases among Kuwaiti women and non-Kuwaiti women reached 640, with the rate of infection among Kuwaiti women 41.2% (with a standard age rate of 43.5 per hundred thousand people), and 38.5% and non- Kuwaiti women (at a rate of 63.9 per hundred thousand people), and a recent study conducted by Dr. Iman Al-Awadi and Dr. Amani Al-Basimi revealed the recovery rate increased from 68.3 per cent to 75.2 per cent from 2000 to 2015. Al-Saleh pointed out that it is remarkable that the number of breast cancer cases increased from 45 cases per 100,000 people to 58 per 100,000 people in the same period, which calls for more effort in awareness programs and early detection.

In turn, the member of the Board of Directors and responsible for the Breast Cancer Awareness Initiative for 2022, Dr. Hessa Majed Al-Shaheen, stressed that the community partnership is one of the most important means of spreading health awareness on the widest scale, explaining that the partnership of media professionals, journalists, satellite and radio channels and all visual, audio and print media is one of the most effective tool in disseminating the correct information about breast cancer, away from the fallacies that spread about this disease from time to time, and reminding women of the importance of doing self-examination every month, in addition to doing mammograms once a year. The doctor pointed to the campaign’s interest in the humanitarian aspect by organizing an event, raise the psychological state, provide moral support and entertain them through the implementation of a number of activities.