'Jamaica Lacks Breast-Cancer Screening Policy'

THE ABSENCE of a national policy on breast-cancer screening is hampering the island's fight against the disease, say officials at the Jamaica Cancer Society (JCS).

Speaking at a symposium at the Mona Visitors' Lodge yesterday, Carol Blair, administrative director at the JCS, said although her organisation had recorded increasing numbers of women being screened for the disease, the drafting of an official, cohesive policy on breastcancer screening would be a game changer.

The Cancer Society facilitated 8,000 screenings in 2009, a 33.3 per cent improvement on the 6,000 who underwent testing in 2008.

Dr Deria Cornwall, president of the Jamaica Association of Radiologists, said nations like the United Kingdom have had an official policy as the fulcrum of its programmes for years, and argued that the war against breast cancer in Jamaica was compromised because women have not been engaged on a national level.

"We need a national breast-cancer screening service that invites women, when they reach a certain age, to come in and be screened," Cornwall said.

"In the UK, when women are born, they enter a national system, they are sensitised from an early age."

She also criticised the one-size-fits-all model suggested by a report from the United States Preventive Services Task Force, a group that focuses on mitigating diseases.

The task force's report has recommended that breast-cancer testing start at 50 years old, but Cornwall said Jamaican women, who are mainly of African descent, are more susceptible to earlier cases of breast cancer.

Said she: "Black women, due to genetic and other unknown factors, are more likely to develop breast cancer at an earlier age, as well as to get a triple negative cancer."

Triple negative cancer case is a particularly highly developed cancer stage which often leads to death.

The island's earliest report of breast cancer is 18 years old. There have also been reports of women as young as 23 developing the disease.

"So many of the reasons black women develop breast cancer early is unknown, which is why we need to promote early screening and this needs to be facilitated through a programme not only for Jamaica, but for the rest of the Caribbean," she said.

The JCS has been operating primarily on the kindness of corporate Jamaica, membership fees, volunteers and other private sponsors.

According to Blair, the Cancer Society's mobile screening programme is being threatened by a dwindling funding pool.

"We want to go on the road and take the screening to women in the rural communities but we are not able to help enough women due to resource limitations," said Blair.

patrina.pink@gleanerjm.com