Although the Breast Cancer awareness month is marked globally in October, Total Exploration and Production Nigeria Ltd, on Tuesday held a cancer awareness programme in Lagos and promised to build mammography centres across the nation.
Mr Nicolas Terraz, the Managing Director/Chief Exeutive Officer of the company made the disclosure at Ajah Market, venue of the programme that the centres were being built as part of Total’s Corporate Social Responsibility.
Represented by Charles Ngeribara, the General Manager, Corporate Social Responsibility Office, Terraz said that two of such centres were at the final stages of installation of the required mammography systems at the General Hospital Gbagada and General Hospital, Isolo.
He said that it was the organisation’s belief that the centres would provide easily available and highly subsidised mammography services with image-guided breast lump biopsy capability to women.
Terraz said that similar projects were being implemented in states like Zamfara, Bayelsa, Anambra and Imo, noting that it was their hope to bring diagnostic facilities nearer to women.
“We believe that these will provide easily available and highly subsidised mammography services with image-guided breast lump biopsy capability to the women in Lagos and the country.
“Nigerian women will be saved from the danger of living with undetected breast lumps or undiagnosed breast cancer. We wish to express our sincere appreciation to Development Africa, our technical partners on this project for a job well done and the Lagos State Government too,” he said.
Terraz said that project and awareness creation were ways of giving back to the society
TBI Africa.com said the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that no fewer than 300 market women attended the programme held at the Primary Health Care Centre, near the Ajah market in Eti-Osa Local Government Area.
The women were taught simple measures like self-breast examination to be done once every month and also when in doubt, women should seek medical personnel assistance.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that in 2018, over two million new cases were diagnosed worldwide, with 627,000 recorded deaths.
