JA celebrates prostate cancer awareness

By Caribbean Medical News Staff
Healthy Caribbean Coalition (HCC) is reporting that prostate cancer poses a major public health issue and a threat to national economic and social development for Jamaica.
According to HCC, one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer which continues to be the leading cancer in Jamaica. It has cost Jamaica millions of dollars to effectively treat this disease, and the indirect cost of reduced productivity associated with the inability to work and loss of economic productivity due to premature death has been quite significant.
Based on the University of the West Indies sampling of Kingston and St. Andrew for the period, 2003 to 2007, the incidence of prostate cancer in Jamaica stood at 78.1 per 100,000 men, and the mortality rate at 63.9 per 100,000.
Reports state that the gap between incidence and mortality is a small one which is of great concern to the Jamaica Cancer Society. In the words of Executive Director of the JCS, Mrs. Yulit Gordon, “those men that are tested positive for the disease are presenting at a late stage when it is difficult for effective treatment to take place; thus reducing one’s chance of survival”.
For the month of September, recognised as Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, the Jamaica Cancer Society waged war on the disease by launching a major public health campaign entitled “Man Up…Stay in the Game” which was highly effective in mobilising over 700 men to come out to get tested. The Society moved its public health and wellness forum outside the corporate areas into the major towns where hundreds of men came out to learn more about the disease and how to make wise lifestyle choices.
The Jamaica Urological Society (JUS) and the Jamaica Cancer Society (JCS) have embarked on a research to study the lifestyle practices and knowledge of the disease among the society’s customers in an effort to better understand why the incidence of the disease is so high, and to identify gaps, if any, in the society’s educational programme.