SIBU: Women are urged to go for regular breast cancer screenings and Pap smear tests as records show that the number of women going for such tests is still low.
According to Sibu MP Oscar Ling, breast and cervical cancer are among the common disease affecting women locally.
The incidence of breast cancer in 2006 was 39.3 cases per 100,000 population and a total of 3,525 new breast cancer cases were reported according to the National Cancer Registry 2006.
“Cervical cancer is the third most common cancer suffered by women, with the incidence rate of 6.5 per 100,000 in 2011 (National Health Morbidity Survey 2016), with a mortality rate of 4.7 cases per 100,000 population in 2012,” said Ling at the launch of breast cancer screening and Pap smear campaign at Oya Road Polyclinic here yesterday.
However in this division, only 246 women have undergone the mammogram screening in 2018. In the same year, for women aged 20 to 65 years old, a total of 3,846 have undergone the Pap smear test and clinical breast examination at local health clinics.
Ling added that at the Oya Road polyclinic, only 31 percent or 621 of the 900 women had gone for the Pap smear test.
“From Malaysian Study on Cancer Survival (MyScan), that studies all types of cancer survival rate over the period of 10 years, it was found that breast cancer was ranked among top five commonest cancer survival, outperforming many other types of cancer. Comparatively, the five-year-survival rate of other type of cancers are; thyroid cancer (82.3%), prostate (73.0%), uterus (70.6%), breast cancer (66.8%), and colorectal cancer (56.8%), pancreas cancer (14%), liver cancer (12.8%) and lung cancer (11%),” he said.
On the different stages of cancer, Ling said that stage 4 cancer has a higher mortality risk ratio (hazard ration) as compared to stage 1 cancer with 7.52 (hazard ratio) for breast cancer and 5.45 (hazard ratio) for cervical cancer.
“The women is an important component in a family. It is important that they go for the screenings as early detection can help reduce the risks of breast and cervical cancers.”
Meanwhile, Sibu Health Department Officer Dr Teh Jo Hin said the response to the two screenings this time was better than the previous years.
