Breast cancer awareness still low in UAE

Sharjah: Experts at the newly opened Sharjah Breast Care Centre (SBCC) said awareness about self-examination, regular screening and early detection to fight breast cancer is still not high enough in the UAE.

The SBCC, which opened earlier this month, is the result of an agreement between the Gustave Roussy Cancer Centre in Paris, UAE-based Pink Caravan and University Hospital Sharjah (UHS), to which the SBCC is attached.

UHS CEO Michael Stroud said early detection — which can lead to a survival rate of 98 per cent — was the best way to fight breast cancer. However, only a minority of women perform self-checks or have themselves screened in the UAE, where it is the most common cancer among women, according to SBCC.

Breast cancer represents the second biggest cause of deaths among women here, with the highest mortality rate in the 45-59 age group, the centre says.

In general, one in eight women will develop breast cancer over the course of their life, it adds.

Most of the cases are diagnosed at the later stages of the cancer, when the “treatment is also radical”, sometimes requiring the surgical removal of the breast, Stroud said.

He added that awareness on breast cancer “still needs to change a little bit”. In 2015, before the SBCC opened, the UHS had offered free screening for months, attracting some 350 women.

“Early diagnosis is critical … We had 90 cases potentially but only 56 per cent of women attended any further screenings for diagnoses or treatment,” Stroud said.

Currently, there is no central unified national cancer register in the UAE. Stroud said, “We need to know what the five-year survival rate is” of breast cancer patients.

He said SBCC was born out of a vision “to bring best practices to Sharjah” to fight breast cancer. The centre describes itself as a “one-stop breast cancer solution”.

Dr Tawfik Tabbara, senior consultant-general surgery at SBCC, said patients can have themselves screened and receive the results on the same day from the centre. Also, each patient case is handled by a team of “multidisciplinary” specialists such as a surgeon, oncologist, radiologist, and pathologist working together on the same case.

“Our patients don’t have to go back and forth between clinics, they don’t feel scattered. The team assigned sit downs with them and their family to chart a plan of comprehensive care … Gustave Roussy centre is also with us in regular meetings on video conferencing,” Dr Tabbara added.

So far SBCC has seen around a dozen patients since its opening.