ACCRA, July 26 (Xinhua) – First ladies across Africa gathered here on Monday to begin a three-day conference aimed at making strategies to fight cervical and breast cancers.
Opening the conference, the fourth of such conference in Africa, Ghana's first lady Ernestina Naadu Mills called for an increase in the awareness on cervical and breast cancers to encourage women to go for constant screening for prevention.
Over 900 delegates including first ladies from across Africa were participating in the conference, which also serve as a platform to improve advocacy for the disease which kills a woman in every two minutes globally.
The conference opened under the theme "Africa Unite in Action: Mobilising Political and Financial Support to Strengthen Cervical Cancer Prevention through Integration."
"Unfortunately, national screening programs for both cervical and breast cancer are not available in the great majority of African countries," Naadu Mills lamented, urging for an integrated approach through which cervical and breast cancer screening would become part of women's health program in the already existing systems so that any woman who went for breast cancer screening would also be screened for cervical cancer.
She also called for the creation of culturally-sensitive messages that would lead to a behavioral change for people to resort to appropriate medical care, as much of the problem on the continent was due to misconceptions about the disease with most people ascribing it to spiritual causes.
