The programe is being implemented by the National Youth Employment Programme, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDEs) in 56 communities in the Ashanti and Eastern regions on pilot basis.

It is an initiative of the BCI to have two unemployed nurses to undergo an intensive training by the end of July, to carry out house-house visits to carry out basic diagnosis of breast cancer and referral to kick-start the programme in August.

According to Dr Mrs Beatrice Wiafe Addai, Chief Executive Officer of BCI and the Peace and Love Hospital, the move is to make the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer more accessible and at the doorstep of people to “reduce the transportation and other logistical burden on the rural woman in the bid to get treatment for breast cancer”.

At a meeting to brief the Regional Co-ordinating Council, in Koforidua she noted that the programme was to bridge the gap between accessing healthcare for breast cancer and to create jobs for the teeming nurses unemployed. She said despite the awareness creation in the intensive campaign spearheaded by her organisation on breast cancer, early diagnosis and treatment remained a challenge because there were no oncology nurses at the various healthcentres and the CHPS centres where majority of the rural dwellers access basic healthcare to give appropriate attention.

Dr Wiafe-Addai appealed to the MMDCEs to support the programme by giving an office from which the nurses would be reporting from, in communities where there were no CHPS centres to ensure timely intervention for the many women in the rural areas who suffer avoidable deaths from breast cancer due to late diagnosis and treatment, poverty and superstition.

Dr Wiafe- Addai said there was the need for the nation to invest in breast cancer and commended the New Patriotic Party for having a policy on breast cancer for the first time in a political manifesto in the 2016 elections.

She expressed the hope that very soon, the government would redeem its promise of putting screening and diagnosis of breast cancer under the national Health Insurance.