Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Disparities for African women
I decided to finally write this article today for many reasons. Surely because I am a woman and that I have the awareness that this disease is registered to have caused 670Β 000 deaths globally in 2022 .
As as a biomedical engineer I started my career working on ultrasound machines with majority of my focus being in Ultrasound in Obstetrics Gynecology but also I worked with different radiologists and I saw different cases of breast scans. So this is also a valid reason for writing this article.
But the main reason for me is to highlight the reality of the disease for African women.
According to the World Health Organisation In different African countries, preventing and treating breast cancer is a pressing public health issue. Breast cancer survival rates five years after diagnosis stand at a dismal 40% in these countries as compared to over 90% in most high-income countries.
In countries showing successful reductions in breast cancer mortality rates, most breast cancer patients are diagnosed at an early stage, when the disease is more likely curable, making late-stage diagnosis and inadequate access to quality breast cancer care lead to high death rates.
Most women are diagnosed at advanced stages when treatment is difficult, costly and less likely to achieve a cure.
For African women, Breast Cancer has alarming statistics highlighting its prevalence and impact.
The incidence of breast cancer in Africa is rising, with a reported age-standardized incidence rate of 37.9 per 100,000 women in 2018, leading to 168,690 new cases and 74,072 deaths Breast cancer burden in Africa: evidence from GLOBOCAN 2018
Notably, early onset breast cancer (diagnosed before age 45) is particularly prevalent among African women, with rates of 51.7% compared to 15.6% in other populations Molecular characterization of early breast cancer onset to understand disease phenotypes in African patients.