Africa’s First Ladies to Fight for Women’s Health at the UN General Assembly
By Henry Neondo
In a few weeks time, the UN General Assembly on Development Summit on the Millennium Development Goals will hold in New York. Quite unlike the previous similar summits, this time round, Africa’s First Ladies pledge to mobilize discussions to feature on issues around women cancers----both breast and cervical cancers.
According to a statement they issued from Ghana recently, Mrs Ernestina Naadu Mills, the country’s First Lady joined by First Ladies from Zambia, Republic of Niger, The Gambia, Swaziland, South Africa and Uganda said they commit to champion a new vision for Africa women’s health that meets the needs of mothers, sisters and daughters in the continent.
“As leaders, we realize women’s lives and health is in critical transition period around the continent”, they said adding that although there is promising improvements in women’s health around the globe partly due to increased global awareness and resources, this is however reflected only in every other parts of the world but Africa. Further, the improvements are mostly in communicable diseases.
They said time was up to begin addressing challenges of non-communicable diseases such as women cancers that are cutting short the lives of millions of African women, weakening families, wreaking economic havoc and threatening the social fabric of communities.
Cervical, breast and other women cancers take tremendous toll on women’s health.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) 90 per cent of all non-communicable diseases occur in the developing world, where Africa falls.
Over 80 per cent of all cervical cancer deaths occur in Africa where girls and women do not have access to prevention services such as education, HPV vaccination and life-saving pre-cancer screening and early treatment.
The First Ladies said, breast cancer, once a relatively unknown disease in developing countries is rising rapidly, often appearing 10-15 years earlier than in developed countries.
With no simple detection tools and tragically insufficient treatment options, breast cancer is quickly emerging as the number one killer of women in Africa every year.
WHO says the cervical and breast cancer combined now kill more than 500, 000 women in developing countries every year.