Globally, breast cancer, the most common female cancer, kills approximately half a million women every year and this is likely to be an under‐estimate.
Breast cancer usually occurs in older women, but in the Middle East, there seems to be not only a high incidence of this disease but also an earlier onset. In the Middle East many women in their early thirties are developing breast cancer ‐ and this worrying statistic is compounded by the fact that these women often present late to their doctors for treatment. Breast cancer remains the greatest single challenge that there is in this region when it comes to cancer.
Too many women are dying unnecessarily early.
Awareness campaigns and programmes do a good job of informing women about certain aspects of the disease, but we need to go a step further in order to give more women and their families the best possible chance to fight this killer disease.
Breast Cancer Arabia is an interactive internet portal that provides women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer the information and support they will need.
This is high quality information about breast cancer and its treatment, information about the cancer centres where they can go and get treatment and an online community support system.
Breast Cancer Arabia bridges the divide between the medical and the human aspects of the disease and is a solution to the critical area in which we, the medical community, is failing. This is in the provision of high quality information to patients in a format they can understand and have access to.
Breast Cancer Arabia is a critically important regional initiative and will impact all 22 countries of the Arab League of Nations.
We need to continue to draw attention to the vital work that we do.
Events serve to raise awareness of The Breast Cancer Arabia Foundation and the work that it will perform, which is to pay for treatment for those women with breast cancer who cannot afford it and provide online training courses for doctors and nurses who wish to become specialised in the treatment of breast cancer.
