KINGSTON, Jamaica – Given that worldwide deaths from cancer exceed those from HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined, “local initiatives to control and treat cancer usually receive support from corporate Jamaica,” says Carol Blair, Administrative Director at the Jamaica Cancer Society.
But the head of the non-profit cancer association agrees that the corporate support for breast cancer screening could be greater, given the nature of the pandemic.
And although the one-in-eight statistic for women the United States of America (USA) does not accurately reflect the average Jamaican woman’s breast cancer risk, in 2001 when the Jamaica Cancer Society (JCS) identified the need to grant greater access to hi-tech breast cancer screening to women in rural communities, Scotiabank Jamaica Limited provided the fillip.
The bank donated a $10 million mobile mammography unit to the Society in 2001, which has since helped JCS to screen more than 16,000 women. In essence, this figure represents 25% of women screened by the Society. “We would not have screened that many women without this unit,” Miss Blair says.
Mobile Mammography Unit
Free screenings available through the unit are currently funded by the National Health Fund; however the Mammography Unit has been out of commission since August last year. The truck, which houses the unit, has travelled across the island at least twice annually for the past seven years.
“This unit introduced Jamaica’s first experience with an accessible level of screening,” Miss Blair adds, “and we know that we can do much more for Jamaican women who live in remote, rural communities if we had another unit, or funds to maintain the current one,” she appeals.
For instance, in Jamaica, cancer is already the third-ranked cause of death in our population and accounted for approximately 18% of all deaths in 1999. The JCS head believes that in an undesirable trend and stresses that the donated unit has helped their objective of eliminating cancer as a major health problem in Jamaica.
The Cancer Society Administrator believes that digital mobile units will help to eliminate access barriers to healthcare by making it more convenient for women to be tested. These tests are critical for the early detection of breast cancer, she concluded.
