By Chijioke Kingsley
Abuja (Sundiata Post) – The Delta State Ministry of Women Affairs has mobilized women groups in the State including the Nigerian Association of Women Entrepreneur (NAWE), Delta State branch, to a breast cancer screening exercise, as part of its activities to celebrate the International Women’s Day (IWD).
The State Women Ministry said with the theme of the 2024 International Women’s Day, titled: “Invest In Women, Accelerate Progress”, cancer diagnostic for Nigerian women remains the undisputable ways to invest and impact on the lives of mothers, ladies and girls, additional that the benefits of health cannot be overemphasized.
Speaking during the awareness, Chairperson of NAWE, Amb. Philomena Badaiki said the cancer screening started March 7th, 2024 and will end next week.
She said the flag-off of the activities also started with a road walk to create awareness for women to come for check up at a designated center, saying that lectures on family planning were also part of the activities to celebrate the day.
She urged health agencies, civil society organizations to emulate Delta State government by stepping up actions to eliminate cervical cancer, adding that cancer kills women every two minutes mostly in low and middle income countries of which Nigeria shares a bulk of it.
“Cervical cancer is the fourth-most common cancer among women worldwide. It is also one of the few types of cancer that can be prevented if the vaccine is made available”, she said.
Badaiki said the disease typifies health inequality as more than 85% of related morbidity and mortality occur among women of low socio-economic status.
“In Nigeria, cervical cancer is the second leading cause of cancer morbidity and mortality. Sadly, Nigeria lacks a tailored cervical cancer control policy or population-based screening programme which is recommended.
“Consequently, existing screening services are opportunistic, sparsely distributed and have reached less than 9% of eligible Nigerian women.
“Our aim for this year’s international women’s day celebration is to highlight the current status of cervical cancer screening in Nigeria, contextualizes the role of female nurses and proffers novel approaches to address missed opportunities for screening by leveraging the nursing workforce”, Badaiki said.
Also as part of activities marking the women’s day Badaiki and her team were invited to grace President Bola Tinubu unveiling of the Nigeria for Women programme tagged ‘P-Bat Cares for Nigerian Women’.
Tinubu launched the initiative on Thursday at the State House conference center in Abuja, our correspondent said.
The president who was represented by George Akume, secretary to the government of the federation (SGF), said the initiative comprises different packages such as an e-market portal, a national women’s helpline, a Naija Save Nigeria integrity/transparency brigade, and a ‘Nigeria be informed’ national broadcast channel.
Tinubu said the programme is to advance the course of women and children in the country with a focus on empowerment and protecting rights.
Consequently, on this year’s special women’s day, the United Nations have postulated that achieving gender equality and women’s well-being in all aspects of life is more crucial than ever if the world wants to create prosperous economies and a healthy planet.
“However, we are facing a key challenge, which is the alarming $360 billion annual deficit in gender-equality measures by 2030”, the UN said.
