First Lady Begum Samina Arif Alvi here Wednes-day said that breast cancer was a treatable disease if diagnosed and treated at early stage and underscored the need for spreading awareness among women and girls about its causes, symptoms, prevention and treatment’s options on constant basis imperative for its complete eradication.
Addressing as a chief-guest at an awareness seminar about breast cancer here at Northwest General Hos-pital Hayatabad, Begum Samina Alvi said that de-spite the fact that breast cancer was a curable dis-ease with highest percentage of survival rate but still it take lives of a large number of patients every year in Pakistan due to lack of awareness, delayed diag-noses and treatment. The First Lady, who is spear-heading an awareness campaign against breast can-cer in the country, said that late diagnosis of the disease was the major cause of high mortality rate in women.
She noted that it was a social stigma or taboo to speak about the disease, which resulted into delayed diagnosis and treatment besides leads to death of a patient. Begum Samina Alvi said Pakistan was also among the countries in the world where the ratio of breast cancer was high due to poor awareness, so-cial-cultural barriers and late treatment. She under-lined the need for continuous mass awareness cam-paigns through print, electronic and social media especially for sensitization of women and girls about its signs, self-examination, diagnosis and treatment’s options. She advised women and girls to examine themselves on a regular basis and contact their doctor immediately for medical tests and ex-aminations in case of witnessing any changes.
Begum Samina Alvi highly appreciated the admini-stration of the government and private hospitals, doctors, media and civil society for running and supporting awareness seminars and workshops against breast cancer in the country including KP. Chief Executive Officer, Northwest General Hospi-tal, Ziaur Rehman, Chairman of the hospital Dr Tariq Hasham, expert oncologists, doctors, male and girls students attended the seminar.
