Let’s leave statistics aside for a moment. The conflicting numbers, even the study that Pakistan may have the highest incident of breast cancer in Asia, do not seem to change anything on ground. More and more women are falling prey to the disease because of reasons that are just so avoidable. The cliché called ‘lack of awareness’ plays actual havoc when it comes to breast cancer. In a country where you cannot openly talk about contraception, it is impossible to talk about a campaign against breast cancer. At times, the awareness is raised through posting pink hearts on social media.

A lot of women die because they can’t detect a cancer which is relatively easier to detect compared to other cancers. A campaign which should reach every girl child after a certain age is not happening as it should. What is worse is that those who do detect something wrong feel too shy of communicating it to their immediate family and then seeing a doctor.

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What is even worse is that women past the age of 40 who know they must get preventive screening done once in two years or so still avoid it.

There is clearly something missing at the policy level which keeps women/people unaware about the disease. The next question to ask is whether those who know about it or suffer from breast cancer have adequate facilities that they can avail. To come back to statistics, in a country that sees 40,000 women dying of the disease every year, there isn’t a single specialised hospital for breast cancer. The non-government initiatives do have more visibility in big cities and one hopes there is coordination between them and the government because a problem of this scale can only be managed by an active involvement of the government.

Let this October bring some real change on ground regarding awareness, diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer.