Avail Yourselves for Breast Cancer Screening – Otiko
The minister for Gender, Children and Social protection, Hon. Otiko Afisa Djaba has appealed to women in the various communities to avail themselves voluntarily for free breast and cervical cancer screening programs.
She made the remarks in a keynote address at the formal opening of the Basic Oncology Training for Community based Nurses by breast care International (BCI) for 120 unemployed nurses from the Ashanti and Eastern regions.
The pilot program which is aimed at breast and cervical cancer awareness creation and the provision of jobs for unemployed nurses at the community level was under the theme: ensuring early stage presentation of breast and cervical cancers; community base nurses pave the way.
”I am of the conviction the success or otherwise of the program in the two regions where these 120 nurses would be embedded, would largely determine whether or not the program would assume a national character in the medium to short term”, Hon. Otiko stated.
The minister announced that indigent breast and cervical cancer patients have been included on the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), to cushion and facilitate their speedy recovery.
”My ministry commends BCI for this novelty, a novelty that could only have come from far-sighted and visionary leader in the person of Dr. Beatrice Wiafe who has resisted all obstacles, natural and artificial, to have envisioned the training of 120 nurses who would be embedded in communities as a rapid response health unit, thereby bringing breast and cervical cancer screening and diagnosis closer to the people”, she said.
She revealed that the project which is partnered by government through allied agencies, dove-tails into president Akufo-Addo’s resolve to integrate the private sector into the mainstream economy by joining hands with resourceful individuals and companies to create employment opportunities for the youth.
Hon. Otiko however, entreated the facilitators who hail from far-flung areas of the globe to spare no efforts in bringing the 120 nurses to speed so that their standard could be matched to any best practice.
She also charged the selected nurses to live exemplary lives worthy of emulation and show respect and compassion to the less endowed women in the rural communities, adding that, the success of the program depends on them.
Source: otecfmghana.com/Nana Appiah
