Dubai Chamber’s fight against breast cancer gains momentum
Chamber’s female staff who attended the Train the Trainer course for fight against breast cancer will conduct workplace workshop for their colleagues next week
As part of the “Making it Our Business” fight against breast cancer project, a social awareness initiative led by Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry under its Corporate Social Responsibility programme, three of its female staff members out of the 44 from 12 participating companies, participated in the Train the Trainer course organised in collaboration with Vital Voices Global Partnership and the US Middle East Partnership for Breast Cancer Awareness and Research last month at the Chamber premises.
Now, these three trainers who attended the workshop facilitated by Susan Brown, M.S., R.N. from Susan G. Komen for the Cure, will conduct the first Breast Cancer workplace awareness workshop for all the female staff on Tuesday, April 22. The trainers, who had picked up the ropes of conducting presentations/trainings for their company employees will put to good use some resources and tools while training all female employees besides providing mammograms to interested ladies at the Chamber. The trainers will also provide educational information to all male employees at the Chamber about customer and community outreach on breast cancer.
The TOT workshop that was divided into several sections according to topic areas like breast cancer, breast cancer statistics, risk factors, screening, signs and symptoms of breast cancer, treatment options and support will be put into practice according to the Chamber’s individualised action plan charted out for the benefit of the staff members. Other participating companies are Dubai Holding, Emaar Properties, Dubai World, Al Tayer Group, BurJuman, Eisa Saleh Al Gurg Group, General Electric, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Federal Express and Microsoft. A second train-
the-trainer will be taking place at Microsoft next week, on April 20.
Today, Breast Cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in women worldwide. In the Middle East alone 70% of the cases are diagnosed in the advanced stages while in the UAE, breast cancer is the most common cancer found in women among both nationals and non-nationals with 63% occurrence in ages 35-54 for national women and 71% occurrence for non-nationals while breast cancer in UAE men is recorded as 1 out of 184 and 5 out of 598 occurrence in non-national men. Out of the 179 cases diagnosed, 77 have died bringing the percentage of cancer deaths to 44%.
The world figures are quite alarming as out of the 1.1million cases, 4,10,712 (about 35%) sufferers died from the dreaded disease which calls for a better understanding of the problem as experts in the field say that though the main reason for the disease is still unknown, the risk factor can be reduced to a larger extent by bringing about changes in lifestyle and increasing the tests for early detection of cancer. An estimated 4.4 million women are alive today in whom breast cancer was diagnosed within the last 15 years.
