The Century Times

In 1993, the U.S. President Mr. Bill Clinton named October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the third Friday in October as National Mammography Day in the U.S. The rest of the world was quick to adopt this new American tradition. India too is no exception to this. The incidence of breast cancer in India is on the rise and is rapidly becoming the number one cancer in females pushing the cervical cancer to the second spot. The seriousness of the situation is apparent after going through recent data from Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The rise is being documented mainly in the metros. This is because more and more women in India are beginning to work outside their homes which allows the various risk factors of breast cancer to come into play. These include late age at first childbirth, fewer children and shorter duration of breast-feeding.

According to The International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organisation, there were approximately 79,000 women per year affected by breast cancer in India in 2001 and over 80,000 women in 2002. But, there are no comprehensive national, regional or local level statistics about the incidence of breast cancer in Indian women. The figures in this article are from the National Cancer Registry.

Hence the awareness for this needs to be spreaded. Most people take it for granted that breast cancer is a women -specific disease. They are perhaps not aware that even men are falling victim to breast cancer.

So everyone should do its bit to spread awareness for this or whatever else they could do to eradicate this disease.

This website is going pink in support of the campaign initiated by Pink for October.

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