Midwife urges self-breast examination for early breast cancer detection

Mrs. Monica Danso, an Assistant Staff Midwife, Family Planning Unit of the Sunyani Municipal Health Directorate has advised women and the general public to constantly do self-breast examination for early detection and treatment of breast cancer disease.

Mrs. Danso gave the advice in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sunyani, saying the era where aged women were only considered prone to the disease were no more.

This, she explained was because everybody including men and children now equally stood the risk of getting the disease.

Mrs. Danso cited a seven year-old boy who was brought to the Unit for having a lump in his breast and was referred to the Sunyani Regional Hospital (SRH) for further investigation and treatment.

She added a teenage girl was also diagnosed at the Unit with a breast cancer and was referred to the SRH to be prepared for surgery at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital but died before the slated date of the surgery.

Mrs. Danso urged women to know the sizes of their breasts and periodically look into the mirror to know whether the colour of the nipples of the breast has changed.

She mentioned lumps in the breast, discolour of the nipples of the breast, change of sizes of the breast, and liquid in the breast as some of the symptoms of possible breast cancer.

Mrs. Danso, therefore, entreated the public not to delay in case of any symptom in reporting at the nearest health facility for examination and investigation to prevent rise in the prevalence rate of the disease, which she said, “is curable”.