Tamale Presbyterian SHS grateful to Breast Care International

Tamale Presbyterian Senior High School in the Northern Region have expressed their profound gratitude to the management and staff of Breast Care International (BCI), a breast cancer advocate NGO, for schooling them on breast cancer, a disease that has been a threat to the wellbeing of Ghanaian women.

According to them, though they have heard about the disease, knowledge about the causes, prevention and control were not known to them and the education they've had will help not only themselves, but their families as well.

The students made the revelation after the staff of Breast Care International (BCI) and Peace and Love Hospital in Kumasi organised a free breast cancer screening and education at the school campus on Monday, September 24, 2018.

The BCI team's breast cancer screening and education, led by its President, Dr. Mrs. Beatrice Wiafe Addai, was part of activities programmed prior to the 8th edition of BCI Walk for the Care 2018, slated for October 27 20118 in Tamale, the Northern regional capital.

The annual event, which started in 2011 in Kumasi, is designed to create breast cancer awareness. According to health statistics, breast cancer kills a woman in every 69 seconds.

The students, numbering about 2,000, were lectured on the risk factors, the signs and symptoms, method of investigations and diagnosis and the mode of treatment of the disease, by Dr. Wiafe Addai.

According to Dr. Wiafe Addai, breast cancer is prevalent among teenage girls in Ghana, between the ages of 16 and 18, hence the need to give them the education as a guide to live their lives, and also to pass on the information to families back home.

Though there are other risk factors like family history of breast cancer, she mentioned lifestyle as one of the major causes of the disease and cautioned them to desist from smoking and excessive alcohol consumption.

“As at now we do not know the causes of the disease, what we can do is to live a healthy lifestyle such as exercising regularly, frequenting the hospitals periodically to examine the breasts and avoiding fatty foods, smoking, too much alcohol consumption,” she cautioned.

She concluded that “the disease is curable when detected early and reported to the hospital.