The unit will be moving across the country taking mammography breast screening for free.
During the journey, a team of volunteers which includes doctors and nurses, will visit the identified clinics to give awareness talks, demonstrate the self-breast examination techniques and conduct screening including palpation and breast scans using portable ultrasound and mammogramme machines.
Launching the facility, Medlane Health Care Superintendent Dr Noorain Lottering said they have taken a stance to share the responsibility to increase awareness about the importance of early breast cancer detection and diagnosis.
“Our vision is to make a difference to the lives of Batswana not only through medicine but through health education, empowering individuals across the nation about diseases and illness so that they may identify illnesses early on to seek medical care and reduce mortality and morbidity statistics,” said Lottering.
She added: “It is with working with the public and private health care networks and NGOs that this goal can be achieved.
Breast cancer remains the number one cancer killer. According to WHO, in 2020, 17.5 per 100,000 women presented in the late stages when treatment efforts can prove futile. This may be in part due to a lack of education on breast cancer and also due to the dispersion of the population not having access to mammography units located in Gaborone. Our unit is a siemens Hologic mammography unit that is quite renowned in mammography for its reliability and quality of imagery.”
She said the unit uses tomosynthesis data to generate both 2D and 3D images of the breast, giving rise to more accurate imagery for the detection of suspicious lesions whilst also reducing the incidence of false positives.
Dr Lottering also said their mammography unit is fitted onto its own individual truck body for safety and ease of travel.
One of the partners of this initiative, First Capital Bank, chief of staff and head of marketing and communications Dr Hajra Mahomed-Tajbhai said breast cancer is diverse and complex and it profoundly impacts everyone it touches – patients, loved ones, doctors, caregivers, advocates and more. She said over 70% of patients seek medical attention when they are in the latter stages of the disease, which commonly results in the loss of lives. She continued: “First Capital Bank has sponsored 100 mammogrammes, valued at P900,000, to be facilitated by Medlane healthcare. The bank is also contributing the sum of P110,000 towards outreach initiatives with the Medlane mobile mammography unit.”
