“Have a check now. Only so you can learn you're OK” – awareness-raising and diagnosis campaign to prevent breast cancer

The social mission “Diaconia” of the Basarabian Church and the company “Avon” in Moldova launch an awareness-raising and diagnosis campaign counteracting breast cancer with the slogan “Have a check now. Only so you can learn you're OK”, Info-Prim Neo reports. The leader of the Diaconia mission, Igor Belei, told a news conference on Tuesday the organization had helped a number of orphan children after their mothers died because of breast cancer. That is why the mission launched a project seeking to diagnose diseases of mammary glands in 2005. “Now the project has gained momentum and covers 80% of the country's territory, as 10,000 women are to be investigated only in 2008,” Igor Belei said. According to doctor Viorel Dumbraveanu, the mobile lab of Diaconia mission will test women from the most areas of the country for free. In July, they have already investigated 1,400 women from Rezina, Falesti, Edinet and Cimislia district, as 560 of them had different breast pathologies. On Wednesday, the mobile lab will start working in Nisporeni, and the week in Balti. The “Avon” company will give women information materials about cancer. The company has published “A guide for the health of your breasts” in Romanian and Russian. Stela Tederascu, an official of “Avon” in Moldova, says the money for the campaign come from selling products with pink ribbons, especially for this purpose. In 1955, the company set up the “Avon” foundation. Working in over 50 countries, the foundation wants to improve the life of women and their families. Starting from 2005, the campaign “Fighting the breast cancer” is on in Moldova, as it is backed by hundreds of thousands of people, whose contributions have been used to support the campaign. Thus, in 2007, they donated medical equipment worth 8,000 euros to the Breast Cancer Section of the Chisinau Oncology Institute. According to statistics, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer every 3 minutes in the world, as a woman with breast is dying every 14 minutes. The breast cancer is the most frequent malign tumor among women in Moldova. According to the Oncological Institute from Moldova, in 2007, the breast cancer was discovered at 751 women. 450 of them died. The main cause of the death is the late appeal to a doctor. Only 6.3 % of the patients were in the first stage of the disease, while ever second patient was in the 3rd-4th stage.