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Group celebrates cancer month with free screening

By Sophia Nwachu
13 October 2019   |   3:42 am
As part of efforts to check the spread of cancer and celebrate cancer awareness month, Mass Medical Mission (MMM) through its Mission PinkCruise is hosting a month-long free community based health outreaches.

As part of efforts to check the spread of cancer and celebrate cancer awareness month, Mass Medical Mission (MMM) through its Mission PinkCruise is hosting a month-long free community based health outreaches.

This is aside ongoing free cancer, eye and dental screening every Wednesday and Friday. “October is a global landmark month for health promotion. This month is marked as International Cancer Awareness Month with special emphasis on breast cancer, the most common cancer in women globally. Incidentally, the most important advocacy and communications day in the eye health calendar also occurs in October (the second Thursday of October every year, designated as World Sight Day).

This year, World Sight Day falls on the 10th of October, 2019, with the call to action being: ‘Vision First!’

This is therefore an important opportunity to draw attention to all the challenges posed by these health issues to ensure that we all rally round to bring about sustainable solution to the problems,” the group said.

According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, one out of every three persons in the world will be diagnosed of cancer in their lifetime. Over 18 million people develop cancer yearly with 9.6 million deaths from cancer every year. Cancer now contributes to one in six deaths globally. Unfortunately, 70% of cancer deaths occur in developing countries like Nigeria due to late detection. Latest WHO data shows that every day in Nigeria 32 women die of breast cancer, 28 women die of cervical cancer, 16 men die daily from prostate cancer and 14 persons die of liver cancer.

The group also stated that data on the global blindness burden is staggering, noting that the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), disclosed that one person in the world goes blind every five seconds and a child goes blind every minute.

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