Lack of mobile unit sets back JCS’s drive to detect breast cancer
Published:Thursday | November 4, 2021 | 5:58 AMKaryl Walker/Gleaner Writer
Saddled by a lack of funding, the Jamaica Cancer Society (JCS) – a non-profit organisation – has been without a mobile mammography unit for years.
The mobile unit is crucial in the fight against breast cancer in the island as it allows representatives of the JCS to travel the length and breadth of Jamaica and provide mammogram tests on women from the lower level income bracket.
According to head of the JCS’s auxiliary, Jamaica Reach for Recovery, Carolynd Graham, the lack of a mobile unit has been a setback in the society’s drive to detect and combat the dreaded disease which infects one in 22 females locally.
“The mobile unit has been dead for at least five years. The importance of it is that it allowed people deep in rural Jamaica to get mammograms so they can get the necessary treatment. That screening is a serious undertaking because if you don’t live in Montego Bay or Mandeville, then you have a serious problem,” Graham told The Gleaner.
At present, the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), which partners with the JCS, is the only state-owned hospital that offers mammogram screening, and even then the cost, which ranges in the region of $18,000, is prohibitive to many of the nation’s women. The JCA previously offered the screening for a price of $5,000.
“There is only UHWI that provides screening on a government level. All the others are private. The cost of screening can be a major problem for many women. The unit would allow screening to be provided at a fraction of the cost,” Graham said.
The now defunct mobile mammogram unit was donated by Scotiabank, which saw the retrofitting of a truck with mammography machines. Sadly, the unit had become obsolete and sat on the premises of the society’s Lady Musgrave Road headquarters in disrepair. The society was forced to sell what remained of the vehicle and now only the empty spot remains.
Graham said the cost of replacing the unit is in the region of $80 million and the JCS has been pulling out all the stops to raise funds to acquire one that will fit in with modern screening practices.
“Nobody has stepped up to say we will sponsor this. As far as I know, it will cost between $60 million and $80 million to retrofit a truck with the necessary screening equipment,” she said.
Early detection of breast cancer in women is critical in allowing health officials to lower the morbidity rate among Jamaican women who can contract the disease from as early as 35 years old.