The health problems specific to women breast and cervical cancer, for instance are at least recognized and, wherever possible, treated free in Britain. In many of the poorer countries, though, there is no help available to those without money.
Salma is waiting to die, her body riddled with the cancer which started with a single lump in her breast. She has been abandoned by her husband and has only her two young children to care for her.
Najma saw her husband take a second wife when she told him she had cancer; her feeling of self-worth is destroyed. Nazili lies, unable to move, her body ravaged by cancer. Her family refused to pay for treatment.
These are just three of the thousands of women in Pakistan, inhibited by culture and tradition as well as sheer poverty, who get no treatment for their cancers. Radio and chemotherapy are prohibitively expensive, and there are long waits even if you have the money. The problem is all too common among poor and illiterate people; they have no information about the disease and even when they become ill, perhaps bleeding for months on end, few seek medical help meanwhile the aggressive marketing of infant formulas has discouraged many from breast feeding a major deterrent to breast cancer. Breast lumps are not discovered because it is seen as sinful to explore your own naked body. Marriage can be essential to survival, and physical perfection seen as crucial to that, so any health problems will often be concealed. Those women who do seek treatment often find themselves dumped by their husbands.
One woman who has worked with cancer patients is determined to organize screening and treatment for poorer women. Dr Saira Khan, president of the Medical Aid Foundation, works in the poorest areas of Karachi to bring women together and educate them about basic hygiene as well as breast and cervical cancer. She has three clinics offering smear tests to all women over 20. She also visits some of the villages and desert areas wherever possible.
Sadly, it is too late for many of the women; Dr Khan finds them with open wounds infested with maggots, and festering sores which need daily treatment.
An important part of the work is offering hospice care. She told me; “The logical step was to take over those patients who are terminally ill and place them in the care of trained staff and volunteer workers so as to make them simply comfortable.
Many more detection centres are needed to make a real impact. Dr Khan would like to see a health centre in every locality offering cancer screening together with primary health care and family planning. For this to happen, in Pakistan as in so many other countries. Women’s health would have to become a very much higher priority for governments and international agencies alike. |
