Revealed: More Ghanaian women in their 20s diagnosed with breast cancer

More Ghanaian women in their twenties are being diagnosed with breast cancer, a development that is seen as a strange.

President of Breast Care international, Dr. Beatrice Wiafe-Addai, says the Ghanaian situation is different from diagnoses done abroad.

“We have ladies with advanced stage of the disease at the age of 21, 22, 24 and for some reason, our disease is different. We happen to have more of the triple-negative disease”, she said.

In the triple-negative breast cancer, the disease does not grow in the presence of three known receptors that doctors can target for treatment, making it more difficult to handle.

“This means that we have to be more aggressive in awareness creation”, about the disease, said Dr Wiafe-Addai.

She observed that misconceptions and myths about the disease could be a key contributing factor to the increased cancer cases among twenty-year-old women in Ghana.

Statistic suggest that a woman dies of breast cancer globally every 69 second but in Ghana lack of breast cancer awareness and education tops the list of reasons usually assigned for the delayed presentation among women in Ghana.

Dr. Wiafe-Addai told Joy News government must make breast cancer treatment a priority to enable women in their reproductive age access health care early.

Dr. Beatrice Wiafe Addai who is leading a global walk in Ghana next month to create awareness about the disease wants screening centres setup across the country to test women of the disease.

-joy