Written by B. Sujitha.
February 4th of every year is celebrated as World Cancer Day which was declared with the intent to spread awareness about cancer; to achieve prevention, detection and treatment and to significantly bring down the number of deaths caused by cancer. World Cancer Day is led by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), a body that works under the aegis of the United Nations (UN).
SKCF and Cancer Awareness Drive:
SKCF believes in Education, which is not just restricted to teaching children, but one that includes spreading awareness and knowledge across different age groups and different areas. Giving a concrete shape to this belief, SKCF through its interns has participated in conducting Cancer awareness drives and programmes on World Cancer Day to spread knowledge about the cancer disease and the number of cases which has become rampant in the recent past.
One of SKCF’s interns, Mehrunnisa had recently conducted a cancer awareness drive in South Delhi. She visited shelter homes for people suffering from cancer near AIIMS and Safdarjung Hospital area. Shelter homes are houses for outstation patients and their visitors who come to the capital for cancer treatment. Each shelter home houses around 8 families with around 20 people, with at least one member from the family suffering from cancer.
How do we conduct Awareness campaigns at SKCF
She spoke to the people living in the shelter homes, enquiring about the hardships they were facing, their stories on how they got affected by cancer disease. Each one of them was infected with a different variant of cancer viz., eye cancer, lung cancer, cervical cancer etc.
One of the important observations was that people lacked adequate awareness about cancer and were gripped by the myths about cancer disease. One of the important misunderstandings being, that a person cannot be cured once infected with cancer.
Mehrunnisa explained to them about the nature of cancer disease with the aim to burst all the myths people had of cancer. She also spread awareness among the people about breast cancer and taught women how to do self-examination for breast cancer. Self-examination for breast cancer is a convenient no-cost tool of five steps. This would go a long way in helping women in identifying tumours at early stages and ensuring its prevention.
Preventing Cancer: We All Can Together
The World Cancer Day theme of 2021 is “ I AM and I WILL” aimed at giving psychological, mental and emotional strength to people suffering from cancer disease. We can achieve a healthier and brighter world if we all come together and help each other out: WE CAN and WE WILL
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