BREAST cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women across the globe. According to reports, Pakistan has the highest incidence rate of breast cancer among Asian countries, which means one in every nine women has a risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer at some stage in life.

The key to managing breast cancer is early diagnosis. Pakistan needs to initiate multi-pronged strategies, including better reporting and documentation of cases, community-level awareness, promoting early detection of breast cancer, overcoming barriers in the provision of better health facilities, and making diagnosis easy and accessible.

Due to the pathetically low health budget of the country, there is a shortage of modern cancer care infrastructure. Pakistani women also lack knowledge and believe in prevalent superstitions and spiritual statements about the disease.

There is a dire need to educate our women, promote early diagnosis and ensure properly equipped public facilities to take care of breast cancer patients.

For better management and effective policies, there is a need to set up a national cancer registry that may identify the accurate prevalence of diagnosed cases, survival rates and other related para-meters. Such a database is needed without any further delay.

The government must invest in cost-effective early breast cancer detection strategies to promote down-staging,

and ensure the availability of accessible specialised health facilities for breast cancer treatment, trained female oncologists, nursing staff, genetic counselling centres and awareness chapters in textbooks. It is a fight that all of us have to fight together at all possible levels and on all possible fronts.

Saman Abdul Qayyum
Karachi

Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2022