Early Diagnosis Fights Cancer

October has been declared in Ukraine a month of public awareness about breast cancer, a world leader among oncological diseases affecting women. With 14,000 new breast cancer cases registered in Ukraine annually, the country does not have any targeted programs aimed at prevention and increasing awareness about this disease. The survey commissioned by the Avon Cosmetics Company involving 30,000 women in 2000, has revealed that breast cancer, not even AIDS, causes the largest concern among women throughout the world. Avon has also initiated this project in Ukraine. Such a concern, however, provokes differing reactions among women: while 66% of women in the US undergo yearly medical examinations and 58% self-examinations, in Eastern Europe the figures are 19% and 15% respectively. For Ukraine, the statistics are even worse. This is explained by the fact that for many people personal health issues are sidelined by everyday worries. Of importance also is that any medical check is an additional burden on the family budget. Still, the major reason is the lack of mammograms and other equipment for breast cancer diagnosis. The few existing ones are owned by private or other hospitals run by big companies, ministries, and organizations, making them unavailable to most women. As a result, there is a paradoxical situation in Ukraine such that a low breast cancer incidence rate is coupled with a high mortality rate, as 70% of all cases are diagnosed too late, rendering treatment ineffective. Such a wide discrepancy between the incidence and mortality rates, the organizers of the project believe, is due to the absence of educational programs highlighting the advantages of early diagnostics of breast cancer and explaining the technique of self-diagnosis.

Moreover, there is actually no popular literature accessible to a wide range of readers that would make it possible to take a closer look at this killer disease, the organizers believe. The stereotype whereby cancer diagnosis is synonymous to a death sentence is still widespread, taking a heavy toll on women’s psychic and psychological condition. According to the coordinator of the program of social and psychological rehabilitation Iryna Zhelnova, the mortality rate among those women who had shared their feelings and worries with psychologists and psychiatrists is actually twice lower. “On hearing the diagnosis, women become withdrawn and surrender to fight for her life,” Iryna Zhelnova continues. “To help them through, the Kyiv Oncological Center runs three training sessions a week for women with breast cancer and for those after surgery.” The way such training is done is very simple, in fact, similar to the one for HIV-infected patients, when people are brought together to share on their thoughts and emotions, and to find possible solutions or at least to work out the pain.

The major difficulty for women with breast cancer is to admit to friends and the family that they are ill, fearing this would take away their jobs and narrow their social contacts. The organizers of the training dubbed their sessions “a diet against bad thoughts.” Their main mission, they say, is to stop women from drawing a line on their lives once they learn about their disease, as well as to prove that with early diagnosis breast cancer is no more serious a problem than an appendectomy.