KARACHI – Pakistan has emerged as one of the countries with the highest rate of breast cancer mortality rate with around 40,000 deaths a year, Dr Jo Anne Zujewski said on Thursday.
She was delivering a lecture on ‘Breast Cancer Awareness’ at local hotel, arranged by the US Consulate General Karachi for journalists working for the print and electronic media.
Zujewski is head of the Breast Cancer Therapeutics in the Clinical Investigation Branch of the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Programme of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), USA.
Quoting different researches, she said that the Western lifestyle is one of the major reasons behind the increasing cases of breast cancer worldwide, but since that lifestyle is not prevalent in Pakistan, the reasons for increasing cases of breast cancer in the country are yet to be found through research.
There is a need for mass awareness in the country so that every woman could have an early check-up for breast cancer.
Consuming vegetables and fruits polluted with pesticides, nuclear radiation and the Western lifestyle are some of the reasons behind breast cancer, but its causes are unknown in Pakistan.
Zujewski said that there is a possibility of men being afflicted with breast cancer as well, but it depends on the family history.
She said that every woman between 30 and 40 must go through mammography since it is easy to cure the disease at an early stage.
“If this cancer is not treated in the early stages, then the cancer cells could spread to other parts of the body, in which case it would become untreatable.”
Compared to the West, the average age to be afflicted with breast cancer is much lower in Pakistan due to a different life expectancy in the region. “Therefore, mass awareness is very important.”
Zujewski’s research activities include the clinical development of targeted agents for the treatment of breast cancer.
She was the founding chairperson of the Breast Cancer Faculty Steering Committee at the NCI and a member of the Planning Committee for the NIH Consensus Conference for the Adjuvant Treatment of Breast Cancer, Preoperative Therapy in Invasive Breast Cancer Scheduled, and the State of the Science Meeting for Ductal Carcinoma in situ.
Her interests lie in global breast health and she has served as an expert medical consultant to several international initiatives in breast cancer. She is the author of numerous publications in breast cancer treatment and prevention.
