Dr Beatrice Wiafe Addai, Executive Director of Breast Care International (BCI), a NGO operating in the Ashanti Region has identified ignorance, illiteracy and poverty as the mean challenges preventing rural women from attending health institutions for breast cancer screening.
Dr Addai said this at the weekend at Tolon in the Tolon/Kumbungu District at a free breast cancer screening for more than 500 women to ensure that they were free from breast cancer.
World Vision - Ghana, an international NGO organized and sponsored the programme, which BCI and Peace and Love Hospital in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region jointly embarked on.
The aim was also to educate the community about the symptoms and dangers of breast cancer and to teach them "Self Breast Examination" methods so that they could examine themselves for the disease.
Those found to have the disease would be transported to the Peace and love Hospital in Kumasi for treatment.
Dr Addai said 95 per cent of early detected breast cancer cases were curable and stressed the need for all women to adopt the practice of visiting health centres periodically for checkup to ensure that they did not contract the disease.
She advised the public especially rural women to disabuse their minds that breast cancer was caused by witchcraft and that they should rather report early enough to the nearest health centre if they saw irregularities in their breasts.
Ms Faustina Tietaah, the Acting Area Development Programme Manager of World Vision in the Tolon/Kumbungu District said the programme formed part of Breast Care International's nationwide programme to enable women access breast screening in their various communities.
She said despite several researches conducted on the disease the cause of it was still unknown.
She said a number of factors had been attributed to it and that the most significant of these was age, saying, "It is estimated that 500,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year 75 per cent of whom are above 50 years".
Ms Tietaah gave the assurance that World Vision would continue to offer support to experts to examine rural women and treat those who are contracted with the disease as means of getting rid of breast cancer from the society.