14,000 Ukrainian Women Suffer from Breast Cancer

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the breast cancer rate is not decreasing. One million women throughout the world suffer from this disease, 14,000 of whom live in Ukraine. The Oncology Treatment Center in Zhytomyr oblast has records on 2,800 women who have had breast cancer surgery, i.e., one-fifth of the total number in Ukraine (only 3% of Ukraine’s population live in Zhytomyr oblast). This figure was made public at a recent meeting of the Zhytomyr Press Club for Reform, which was held at the Oncology Treatment Center of Zhytomyr oblast. Last year the center opened a special department for ultrasound testing and mammograms, which services up to 200 patients a day. The department’s chief, Mykola Minenko, stresses the importance of an early diagnosis of this disease, since 500,000 women in the world die every day as a result of complications caused by late diagnoses, and every 35 minutes a new case of cancer is recorded in Ukraine. The Zhytomyr center has one of the best indicators in Ukraine, since 70% of all cases are diagnosed here in the early stages, when the effectiveness of treatment is rather high. Tanya Sluka, the head of the education department at the oblast’s medical center says that it is a problem placing public advertising on the local TV channels to promote the need for self-testing and yearly medical checkups. Doctors praise the effectiveness of TV shows on medical subjects, which increase the number of patients who show up for a checkup to 60 a day. A couple of former patients of the treatment center, volunteers Olena Hrabar and Rayisa Romanenko, say that the mass media and state health care agencies pay insufficient attention to promoting educational measures aimed at preventing breast cancer and the need for an early diagnosis of this disease, as well as to promoting social programs at the local level.