By KT Reporter
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a non-government organisation that promotes preventive medicine, has embarked on a campaign of reaching out to children with messages on cancer prevention and early treatment.
The school’s campaign, launched in Kyotera district, is intended to ensure that the Children are equipped with the basic knowledge about cancer and its prevention, such they can also spread the messages through their communities.
Mark Ssempeera, the Director of Building Health Communities Africa, found it necessary to empower the school children with accurate information about cancers, as part of the broader plan of reducing the disease burden in the community.
He indicates that they have chosen to emphasise breast cancer, which apparently is the third most common cancer type among Ugandan women. It comes after cervical cancer and sarcoma.
According to Ssempeera, they are targeting to sensitise school children in Kyotera about the known lifestyle choices and the diets that expose them to more risks of acquiring cancer.
He explains that, in addition to training students on how to carry out self-assessments on their bodies for early detection of cancer, they are also highlighting to them how whole food and plant-based diets can help in preventing breast cancer.
Doctor Joseph Lule, a Surgeon attached to Our Lady Health of the Sick Nkozi Hospital, is hopeful the school’s campaign will help reduce the disease burden in the area, because the young girls will now receive simplified messages about the problem.
He explains that through sensitising the school children, they intend to create a critical mass of informed persons who will pass on messages and skills of self-examination and early screening for cancers, to reduce the burden of late diagnosis for patients.
Reports at the Uganda Cancer Institute suggest that high cancer mortality is largely due to late diagnosis, with up to 89% of women presenting with stages III and IV, which significantly reduces their chances of survival and makes the disease difficult to treat.
Dr Lule observes that they intend to use a school campaign to heighten public awareness about breast cancer and other relatively ignored types, yet they are equally dangerous.
Resty Namujju, a teacher at Kaliiso Progressive Secondary, one of the schools where the campaign is implemented is Kyotera district, observes it as a timely intervention that will improve the quality of life of their students.
According to her, the interface between the students and professional medical officers helps to demystify all the cancer information, which teachers could perfectly do.
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