Breast Cancer Awareness Month

October is the Breast Cancer Awareness month. You may have been hearing and reading a lot about breast cancer already. Do you sometimes feel that you are being overloaded with information about breast cancer? And the pink campaign is all a big farce?

There is a lot of discussion about it worldwide. But back here in India, we still have a long way to go where breast cancer awareness is concerned.

True... breast cancer is not as common here as in the US and Europe (where one in seven women has it). But it is disheartening to read the WHO (World Health Organization) report that less than 5% of Indian women between 50 and 70 years of age underwent a screening mammogram. Even those who underwent a screening mammogram rarely followed it up with another mammogram.

Clinical breast examination is also not something women get on a regular basis. Most women here still consider breast health a taboo topic and are not comfortable getting their breasts examined when they are apparently 'healthy'. Even when they are ready to go for a clinical breast examination they start looking for a female doctor...and it has to be a doctor that she and her family knows well.

There are breast clinics in major cities but very few to cater to the millions of Indian women. Moreover, not too many women walk into breast clinics unless they are continuously stimulated with breast cancer awareness programs and write-ups.

As we talk about breast cancer awareness, I thought of sharing my earlier article on the common myths about breast cancer. Hope you find it helpful.

EduSat - Education Initiative by the Indian Govt.

Today's experience at Vigyan Prashar's office was rather different. I am now used to speaking on health related matters to gatherings of hundreds of people. My smallest audience till now was probably a group of seven ladies at a private gathering at a close friend's residence.

Today I was speaking from a virtual classroom inside Vigyan Prashar's studio. I was connected to the students through India's education satellite, EduSat.

The topic was the same...'Breast Self Examination -Why? When? How?' What was different was the audience. I was not seeing my audience who, I am told, were viewing the program in their schools and offices across India. There were schools, colleges and offices in UP, Kashmir, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Arunachal Pradesh, etc from where students had logged in to attend the health tutorial. It was strange having to talk into a camera, with not much reaction on the face of the camera person. I was wondering if she really bothered what I was speaking about! But she was prompt to focus on my hands when I demonstrated the examination on the mannequin.

After the lecture, came the questions and it was a nice experience speaking to girls in schools from different states and clearing their queries. A new experience for me altogether.

EduSat, the world's first dedicated satellite for distance education, has made virtual classrooms a revolution in Indian education. Kerala was the first state to start virtual classes through EduSat in 2005. Today, as I spoke, a school in Kashmir was launching its virtual classes with my program.

Preventing Major Non-Communicable Diseases

International World Health Day... I was one of the judges for a poster making competition at a management institute in Ghaziabad.

There was overwhelming response from the students. There were over 90 students who had participated in the poster making competition. Some of the posters were very well designed. There were innovative ideas too.

Many of the students had listed out 10-20 harmful substances found in cigarette smoke. There were some posters that depicted the many ways in which tobacco acts on the different systems of the body. I was really impressed with the amount of homework the undergraduate students had done. Awareness is probably the first step towards abstinence from smoking.

After the competitions, there was a 2 hr lecture session on health awareness. Dr Agarwal introduced the term 'non-communicable diseases' and discussed the signs and symptoms of common non-communicable diseases (heart disease, diabetes, cancer etc). I spoke on the preventing measures common to these three  diseases...tobacco control, eating right and exercising.