Timely detection to save lives – El Heraldo de Chihuahua

By: Laura Patricia Contreras

In March, in the month in which International Women’s Day is commemorated, as part of the struggle of women for gender equality and for the visibility of the problems that afflict us, we still face important challenges. One of them is the fight against breast cancer, this type of cancer represents the leading cause of death from malignant tumors in Mexican women aged 25 and over. In our state, Chihuahua, the mortality rate is 27 deaths per 100 thousand women.

Treatment for breast cancer can be effective if detected early, people diagnosed early have up to a 95 percent chance of surviving, for this reason timely detection is essential to end the high mortality from this neoplasm. malignant. Despite medical and technological advances and government efforts, breast cancer continues to represent a public health problem in our country.

Among the challenges we find ourselves with are poor education and information, inefficiency and lack of coverage of timely detection programs, insufficient human, material and technical resources, that is, insufficient personnel and specialized breast units, delay in care in public institutions.

In addition to the aforementioned problems, women who have to face the diagnosis of having breast cancer are affected not only in their physical and emotional health, but also in various aspects of their lives. One of them is labor, since they are discriminated against for having to be absent from their jobs to receive cancer treatment, which makes their employers assume that the person will not be able to continue with the performance necessary to carry out work activities. .

Also those women who are dedicated to household activities are unprotected since they are sometimes abandoned by their sentimental partner, who served as the economic support of the relationship, causing them to be left without economic protection, making their situation more difficult.

For these reasons, it is important to continue efforts to work on effective actions and programs for early detection of breast cancer, since this would mean saving lives and fewer women having to go through such aggressive processes and treatments to combat this type Of cancer. Likewise, contributing to prevention would have a lesser impact on the resources allocated to breast cancer in institutions.

–