Gender advocate urges year-round breast cancer education

A Ghanaian gender and disability advocate, Ms Josephine Oppong-Yeboah, has urged the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to intensify breast cancer education and outreach programmes, particularly in rural communities, to promote early detection and reduce preventable deaths.

She said myths and misconceptions about the disease, coupled with limited access to healthcare in remote communities, often discouraged women from seeking medical attention until the condition had advanced.

Ms Oppong-Yeboah, a Ghanaian media personality and US-based healthcare professional, said sustained public education was needed to correct these misconceptions and encourage women and girls to seek medical advice when they noticed unusual changes in their breasts.

In an interview, she said breast cancer awareness activities should extend beyond October, the month dedicated globally to raising awareness of the disease, to ensure that women in underserved communities receive adequate information throughout the year.

“Many women are still under the impression that once breast cancer is detected, they are going to die. Such myths can only be corrected through sustained educational outreach,” she said.

She explained that some women feared that they would die if they had to undergo breast removal as part of their treatment, leading them to delay seeking medical care.

This, she said, could result in late diagnosis and make the disease more difficult to manage.

“We need to educate our women and girls about breast cancer. There is life after breast cancer detection. It only becomes a problem when the condition is detected late,” she said.

Ms Oppong-Yeboah called on the GHS to adopt innovative approaches to reach women in remote communities, where misconceptions about the disease and difficulties accessing healthcare services remained concerns.

She said community-based education, supported by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), could help bridge information gaps and encourage more women to seek timely medical attention.

She commended NGOs working with the health service to promote breast cancer awareness across the country, urging them to sustain their efforts beyond the annual October campaigns.

“As a nation, we need not only to wait for October to do this education. We have to adopt any means to reach our women, especially those in the remotest parts of the country,” she said.

She stressed that women should not continue to lose their lives to a disease for which early detection and timely treatment could improve outcomes.

“We should not be losing our women to breast cancer. We need to do whatever we need to do to get the awareness message to our women,” she said.

Ms Oppong-Yeboah encouraged women and girls to visit health facilities for breast health checks and promptly seek professional medical advice if they detected unusual changes in their breasts.

She said sustained awareness creation, coupled with timely access to healthcare, was essential to helping women overcome fear, dispel misconceptions and make informed decisions about their health.