Cancer Awareness Programme for Women

“Prevention is better than cure,“ goes a saying.  More than prevention what is important in today’s scenario is awareness.

As part of their health initiative, SARVAM organized a half-day Cancer Awareness programme for the women in Poothurai village on 19 February 2020. The main objective of this programme was to create much-needed awareness amongst all the village women regarding cancer, which is very common nowadays.

People living in cities are more aware because of their constant exposure to media and other sources. Women in villages are mostly timid and they do not go out of their homes and the lack of opportunity to know the basic information causes a lot of damages to their health.  Cervical cancer and uterine cancer are common among many women nowadays and lack of knowledge about this will incidentally result in death.

Considering all these facts, SARVAM organized this cancer awareness programme. Around 40 women from Poothurai village participated in this and got benefitted.

Ms. Geetha, a Public Health Nurse with more than 35 years of experience in creating awareness was invited for this programme. She has received the Nightingale Award, which is the highest recognition for Nurses.

She talked about cancer and how to overcome this disease. She said that there are many natural ways through which one can diagnose cancer without taking any tests. This was a piece of new information even for the educated people there.  More importantly, the cost of taking these tests is higher and that is the reason many people are not ready to take such tests.

She further demonstrated some simple procedures which can be done at home to diagnose cancer. Foods that can avoid cancer were also recommended by her.

She stressed the fact that cleanliness and proper hygiene are the basic requirements to keep cancer away.   The steps for keeping the environment and themselves clean to avoid cancer were explained.

She gave clear information about the various screening tests that are available for cancer detection and how and where they can be tested for the same.

This programme was much useful for the women and the sessions were conducted in the participatory method. Since the trainer has experience in dealing with patients for more than 35 years, she conducted the sessions in the participatory method and it was much useful for the women to learn more about the disease. More doubts were raised by the women and those were clarified by the doctor. The women gathered there said this was an illuminating session which will benefit them at a great level.