2023-10-11 09:58:24
The month of October each year is dedicated to breast cancer awareness and screening. A campaign that mobilizes thousands of people around the world to fight the second deadliest cancer in women.
In Guinea, breast cancer is the third deadliest cancer following cervical and liver cancer. The factors favoring this type of cancer are numerous.
First, there are the factors linked to diet and lifestyle, which are tobacco consumption, the absence of regular physical activities, but also the fact of not consuming foods often enough. fruits and vegetables, regularly consume fatty foods and animal proteins. Overweight and obesity is a common denominator of non-communicable diseases including breast cancer.
Questioned on the subject, the cancer surgeon and head of the cancer department at the Donka national hospital, Professor Namory Traoré explains that there are certain cancers which are also linked to age with women and there are also breast diseases. which, if left untreated, can progress to breast cancer.
These are border diseases, which are neither benign nor malignant, neither on cancers nor on benign tumors, explains the doctor. “There are also genetic factors, notably overweight and obesity, which is a common denominator of non-communicable diseases including cancer, when they are detected and not treated, they can lead to the development of cancer.”
On the figures relating to the evolution of breast cancer in Guinea, the oncologist believes that the disease is underdiagnosed in our country and the statistics are as well.
“At the national level, it is the third deadliest cancer following cervical cancer and liver cancer with an estimated number of 739 annual cases and just over 400 deaths per year. This means that every day in Guinea, two cases of breast cancer are diagnosed and at least one case dies every day,” he declared.
In 2023, in the oncology department of Donka University Hospital, one in four (¼) patients consulted suffer from breast cancer. A figure which raises the proportion to 25%.
Throughout the country, breast cancer treatment is only carried out in a single public hospital currently relocated to the Jean-Paul 2 hospital and the NEDISAR polyclinic which is a medical-associative center which takes care of cases. of cancer.
Most of the patients who arrive in these services come 42% from Conakry, because there is no specialized care service in any city in the interior of the country. “Unfortunately, in our country, there is only mammography in one hospital which is the Donka University Hospital at the public hospital level. The other mammograms are in private places,” explained the oncologist.
Like all countries in the world, Guinea is experiencing a considerable increase in the disease. In 2012, the country’s only cancer service recorded 600 annual cases of patients.
Today, we are at nearly 739 cases. Which confirms that there is an increase in the number and cases of mortality. However, Professor Namory Traoré affirms that there are great therapeutic advances.
“We have things that we didn’t do in Guinea, that we do today. Before 2022, we did not do chemotherapy with perfusion device chambers. There, currently, implantable chambers are being installed which can significantly improve the quality of chemotherapy. We did not do heliophilic biopsies, currently we do microbiopsies. We are really making progress because today we have anticancer drugs at the Central Pharmacy that did not exist before 2022. Since 2022, the Central Pharmacy of Guinea now has anticancer drugs at a lower price compared to the price ‘found in private pharmacies’.
This month of October, the cancer specialist advises women to go to health centers and health structures to get screened. Because it makes it possible to discover diseases at their beginning and to offer treatment that will not require enough resources. “Not to wait until the illnesses are manifest, until there are complications to launch SOS. We have a lot to gain from being screened quickly in order to avoid the development of the disease and also to benefit from treatment,” says Professor Namory Traoré.
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