Girls For Change, J&J Hospital Take Steps Against Cancer -Call For Government's Commitment

One of Liberia’s leading female organizations, Girls for Change Organization in partnership with J & J Memorial Hospital will host a one-day Breast Cancer awareness event in Liberia and organize a free screening for women on Saturday, November 2, 2019, at the VOA Community on the Robert field Highway, lower Margibi County.

The event is expected to bring together hundreds of women from across the VOA Community and the event is held under the theme: “Committing to The Fight; I am, and I will”. The theme seeks to counter the negative attitude and fatalistic belief that nothing can be done about cancer and instead promotes how individual actions can be powerful and impactful to fight breast cancer.

According to the Executive Director of Girls for Change Organization, Mrs. Ora Barclay Keller, giving the scary statistics that 548 of women are diagnosed with gynecological cancer particularly cervix uteri, corpus uteri, and ovary cancer every year, she believed it was time to raise awareness to reduce the number of women diagnosed with the disease and improve the health outcomes of women living in marginalized communities.

Mrs. Keller, said, Cervical cancer ranks as the 1st most frequent cancer among women in Liberia and the 1st most frequent cancer among women between 15 and 44 years of age according to the Liberia Human Papillomavirus and Related Cancers, Fact Sheet, 2018 and the World Health Organization Cancer Country Profile shows that 900 women die of cancer annually while 700 men fall to the disease.

The women rights activist, Mrs. Keller, said it was time to take serious steps in addressing the alarming statistics of the disease in Liberia, and call on the Government of Liberia to provide budgetary support, train more health workers and provide the space for more screening and treatments for people diagnosed with the disease. She calls on the international partners to support programs that will reduce the number of women diagnosed, creates more awareness for women across the country, set up an innovative system to track, screen and treat women with the disease.

Mr. Keller, show gratitude for the partnership with the J & J Memorial Hospital, and appreciated the opportunity provided for free screening, she called on women in the Community to take advantage of the opportunity to be screened and know their status, and thank the leadership of the hospital for the great job in improving health services for the people of Liberia, said J & J Memorial Hospital is ranked by many Liberians as one of Liberia’s best health centers because of their services to the ordinary people.

Dr. Yatta Sakie Wapoe - Montserado County Health Officer will be speaking at the program.