300 breast cancer patients last year

October has become synonymous with breast cancer awareness campaigns. Medicine has advanced since the days when women with breast cancer had no other choice but to undergo a masectomy, yet it remains one of the largest causes of cancer deaths in women.

“Unfortunately, statistics show that breast cancer is common in Malta with 300 registered cases last year,” Health Parliamentary Secretary Chris Fearne said. “The good news is that it can be treated if it is caught in its early stages.”

“Every week, the National Centre for Monitoring Cancer sends out 300 invitations to women between 50-60 years old for free mammography tests,” Fearne said, adding that around 60% of women accept these invitations. “This monitoring system has already identified and treated over 200 cases of breast cancer.”

Nationalist Health spokesman Claudio Grech called for as much early education on breast cancer as possible so that “not a single life is lost simple because of a lack of awareness”.

He called on the government to continue building on the breast cancer monitoring programme that the previous Nationalist government had begun and to increase the amount of oncological medicine that can be given to patients for free.

“As a politican, I feel that we shouldn’t accept situations in Malta where a person’s life depends on charity- we need to work together so that public health funds are used as efficiently as possible.”

Read the full feature story in Sunday’s edition of ILLUM.