Letter of the Day | Breast cancer diagnosis and treatment delays demand urgent action

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Breast Cancer Awareness Month is marked with fundraising events and various public education fora. Yet many of us do not know that Jamaica has one of the highest incidence rates for breast cancer in the Caribbean. The Ministry of Health and Wellness states that cancer of the breast is the most common cancer among Jamaican women. According to the Global Cancer Observatory, Jamaica recorded 1,327 new cases in 2022, which represented 35 per cent of all new cancer cases in the country that year. Approximately 684 women died from the disease during that period, representing a 9.8 per cent increase over the previous year.

Despite global advances in breast cancer screening and mammograms, it remains a major public health challenge in many countries, though survival rates vary. While government support is provided through the National Health Fund (a partial subsidy toward mammogram screenings), the public diagnostic infrastructure remains limited, with only a small number of public mammography units operating across the island.

The Jamaica Cancer Society started the month by announcing that its mammogram machine has been non-operational since August 29.

At a recent Jamaica Information Service Think Tank, Dr Johnson-Campbell, regional priority non-communicable disease and family health coordinator, Western Regional Health Authority, stated that delays in diagnosis and treatment are directly linked to poor health outcomes for Jamaican women. Drawing from research that she conducted, Dr Johnson-Campbell examined cases of women diagnosed with breast cancer between 2012 and 2016 in Western Jamaica and found significant delays between the discovery of symptoms and the start of treatment.

The mean or average time between women discovering that there was a problem and starting treatment was 44 weeks or 11 months. Indeed, biopsy results for potential breast cancer cases can take two to three months to be returned. Meanwhile, the cancer may have spread significantly to other parts of the body, requiring more expensive interventions and increasing mortality risk.

The wait for diagnosis and treatment is an unacceptable situation for women, many of whom are stalwarts in their families and communities, contribute to the labour force, and/or provide care for our dependent and sick family members. We need a stronger commitment from the government to reduce breast cancer fatalities in the country. We also deserve to know, through rigorous analysis of the evidence, the reasons for the long delays in providing diagnosis and treatment and what is being done to systematically address these gaps in public health services.

DOREEN GORDON