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End breast cancer stigmatisation Mrs Sumani
Mrs Ramatu Sumani
A cancer advocate, Mrs Ramatu Sumani has urged women to champion the course to end stigmatisation against breast cancer patients and survivors.
According to her, misconceptions surrounding the disease was a major contributory factor to the reason most survivors and sufferers of the disease continued to live in fear.
Mrs Sumani made the assertion in an interview with The Spectator on Monday.
She said it was important for women to come out in their numbers to speak to issues confronting them if they wanted to make the country and world safer and better for themselves and young girls.
She said women’s active participation in the fight against breast cancer stigma could help raise awareness about the importance of early detection methods such as regular self-examinations and mammograms, stressing that when more women are knowledgeable about the risks and symptoms of breast cancer, lives can be saved through early diagnosis and treatment.
She said cancer among Ghanaian women, especially breast cancer should be of concern to every woman, considering the high number of women who are diagnosed of the disease in Ghana each year, and the fact that many breast cancer patients need to undergo surgery to remove the affected breast or both breast as part of the treatment.
“The stigmatisation usually arises when people start pointing at women who have lost their breasts to cancer, to the extent that newly diagnosed ones do not want to even report to any health facility when they notice abnormalities in their breast.”
“This is not what we want as women. We should rather focus on encouraging each other than gossiping about our sisters without breast. This is bad. Let us rise above such acts and render support to each other. If it happens to your sister today, it can happen to you tomorrow so let us all come together to show love to breast cancer fighters and survivors,” she said.
Touching on the rate of breast cancer among women in Ghana, Mrs Sumani, who is also a breast cancer survivor and organiser for the Cancer Support Network Foundation said the World Health Organisation (WHO) – Cancer Country Profile of Ghana 2020, shows that breast cancer is the number one cancer among women in Ghana with an incidence of 20.4 per cent and a relatively high mortality rate.
That, she said, was not encouraging therefore efforts against all obstacles hindering the progress of the fight against the disease in Ghana should be intensified as a matter of urgency, to save lives.
Stigmatisation, she said, can have severe psychological and emotional effects on breast cancer patients and survivors, “however women’s involvement in challenging stigmatisation can contribute to the creation of a supportive environment that uplifts and encourages those affected by the disease,” Mrs Sumani added.
By Raissa Sambou
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) will undertake a nationwide Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination exercise in schools from October to December 2026 to protect eligible girls against cervical cancer and other HPV related diseases.
The exercise, organised in collaboration with the Ghana Education Service (GES) and its partners through the School Health Education Programme (SHEP), will be conducted in two rounds.
The first round is scheduled for October 19 to 23, 2026, while the second will take place from November 30 to December 4, 2026.
In a press release dated October 19, the GHS explained that health workers would visit schools across the country to vaccinate eligible girls aged 9 to 14 who have not yet received the HPV vaccine.
The exercise forms part of efforts to raise awareness about the routine HPV vaccine, increase vaccination uptake and strengthen the country’s routine immunisation programme.
The GHS has called on school authorities, parents, guardians, teachers and community leaders to cooperate with health teams to ensure the successful implementation of the exercise.
The Service reaffirmed its commitment to protecting the health and well-being of Ghanaians, particularly children, through vaccination and other public health interventions.
By: Jacob Aggrey
Vice President Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang has held high-level discussions with organisers of the 2026 Global South Academic Forum in Shanghai, seeking to draw lessons from China’s acclaimed rural revitalisation and poverty reduction drive.
The meeting, led by the Forum Chair, Professor Lu Xinyu, explored practical areas of cooperation and knowledge exchange between Ghana and China, with focus on community-driven development, fisheries and aquaculture, local governance, sports initiatives, and infrastructure development.
According to officials, the engagement is part of a broader effort by the Ghanaian government to study tested development models that can be adapted to the local context to promote inclusive growth, empower local communities, and improve livelihoods across the country.
China’s success in lifting over 800 million people out of poverty through targeted rural policies, investment in agriculture and local infrastructure has become a global reference point for developing nations.
The Vice President’s team says insights from the Forum will help inform policy direction, particularly in strengthening decentralised governance, boosting the fisheries and aquaculture sector, and investing in community-level infrastructure and youth sports development.
Professor Opoku-Agyemang is expected to continue engagements with academic and development institutions while in China.
By Edem Mensah-Tsotorme
