At the end of the pink month... a breast cancer survival story and a lecture on psychological support

Damascus-SANA

Several factors helped me recover from breast cancer, the most important of which is early detection, commitment to treatment, and great psychological support from my family and friends. With these words, engineer Kifah Debs summarized her experience as one of the most common cancer survivors in women.

As part of an event held by the Family Planning Association in Kafr Sousa, at the end of the awareness month for early detection of breast cancer, the pink month, Debs said it was not easy when the doctor told me that I had a cancerous mass and began the treatment journey in 2017, which ended with my victory, adding with joy.

Debs continued what my three sons first thought about was the difficulty of chemotherapy, but early detection contributed to his sessions and greater reliance on hormonal therapy, stressing the importance of psychological support and encouragement provided by her husband, especially since she was initially refusing to take treatment.

Engineer Samer Suleiman considered what he presented to his wife with Debs as a duty and responsibility in the first place, as he feels happy when the doctors confirm that his support is one of the reasons for her recovery, noting that he was encouraging her to take tests before discovering the disease, and that was a positive result for discovering it in the right time.

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During the event, which was held with the support of the United Nations Population Fund, the Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Syrian Board of Psychiatry, Dr. Mazen Haidar, gave a lecture in which he stressed the importance of having a psychological support team for cancer patients in every hospital and treatment center, as well as psychosocial support from the environment, given the association of such diseases. depressed.

Haidar pointed out that the fear of disease and its discovery is natural, but it is no longer justified with scientific progress and what early detection has achieved, along with appropriate psychological support, from scientifically documented results of recovery. Therefore, dismantling fear through correct medical information is an essential message that must be presented in awareness campaigns for early detection and treatment. When diagnosing, pointing to the need to change the common image of the disease in dramas and other media, and clarify information related to it.

Regarding the services of the Family Planning Association, the association’s president, Dr. Hazar Miqdad, indicated that through 42 gynecological clinics in various governorates, reproductive health services and awareness of early detection of breast cancer are provided throughout the year with the support of the United Nations Population Fund. She announced the opening of a similar clinic in rural Damascus, explaining that the clinics provide counseling services, health awareness, psychological support, a self-examination mechanism, and refer women who need advanced medical investigations to specialized clinics and hospitals.

For his part, the resident representative of the fund, Iyad Nasr, affirmed the commitment to support health facilities to provide high quality awareness, diagnosis and prevention services and build the capacity of health workers for early detection of breast cancer, noting the results of the fund’s partnership with 21 civil societies and a number of government agencies, which provided reproductive health services to about 550 people this year. A thousand women.

The association’s volunteers presented a theatrical sketch on the importance of early detection of breast cancer, which United Nations statistics documented during the year 2020, 2.3 million women diagnosed with it and 685,000 deaths worldwide.