Fifty selected journalists drawn from various media houses in the Eastern Region, made up of morning show hosts and radio presenters, have attended a two-day seminar on cervical, breast and prostate cancers at the Peace and Love Hospital in Kumasi.

The training, which was organised by Breast Care International (BCI), in partnership with Peace and Love Hospital, with financial support from Teva Pharmaceuticals, was to enhance the knowledge and understanding of media practitioners on reporting on the diseases in their media outlets.

It was also to widen the reportage on the diseases which affect mostly women and men in the communities especially in the rural areas, as well as other related non-communicable diseases to improve their coverage in support of public awareness education.

Addressing participants at Oduom, a suburb of Kumasi, the President and Founder of the Breast Care International (BCI), Dr Beatrice Wiafe Addai, urged the media to give the needed attention to breast cancer to increase public awareness.

Early reporting

She stated that journalists, morning show hosts and radio presenters had a major role to play in the education of women and the public in general on the need for early reporting of such diseases to health facilities for treatments to avoid unfortunate consequences and deaths.

Dr Wiafe Addai, who is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Peace and Love Hospital, indicated that Ghana would not develop when its masses were unhealthy, and therefore emphasised the need for the media practitioners to play a leading role in the education and control of breast cancer, which was killing more women in the country and the world as a whole.

Lack of awareness      

She was worried about the lack of awareness, high cost of treatment, lack of counselling and training which she said had contributed to the spread of the disease in the country.

Dr Wiafe Addai called on nursing training institutions to place a lot of emphasis on breast cancer management in their curriculum to enable nurses to manage the disease effectively.

She indicated that BCI had over the years trained more than 100 nurses from the various hospitals and health centres in the country in effective management and control of the disease.

Dr Wiafe Addai was worried about the manner in which some radio stations, especially the twi radio ones, portrayed the issues of breast cancer and other cancers such as cervical and prostate cancers as if the diseases were a joke.

Other speakers including Professor Seth Agyei Wiafe from Lomo Linda University, USA, Professor Tony Opoku-Agyemang from BCI, Professor Wil Ngwa from Johns Hopkins University, USA,  Dr Augustine Tawiah, Consultant Gynaecologist, Dr Samuel Amanamah, Consultant Urologist, Linord Moudou, Senior Media Personality, Voice of America, USA, Senanu Tord, Video Journalist, Voice of America, Ghana, in their various contributions, attributed the causes and high rate of the disease to poverty, lack of awareness, fear and stigma among others.