Parliament to be daubed in pink as part of Europa Donna campaign
PARLIAMENT HOUSE is to be lit up with pink lights next week as part of this year’s campaign to raise awareness of breast cancer on the island, Europe Donna Cyprus announced yesterday
Europa Donna president and DISY deputy Stella Kyriakidou said yesterday at a news conference that in 2005 another 405 Cypriot women were diagnosed with breast cancer, while 60 a year lose their lives to the disease. Around eight men a year die from breast cancer on the island she said.
To commemorate those Cypriots with breast cancer and those who die each year respective numbers of pink, white and blue silhouettes will be carried from the parliament building to the Nicosia Town Hall and placed on the D’Avila bastion for the duration of the week-long awareness campaign.
The campaign will start on October 9 and run until October 15 during which several events will be organised.
In addition these and to the march from the House on October 12, there will be two lectures during the week, and a team of plastic surgeons from Italy will be in Cyprus to carry out a number of breast reconstruction operations on difficult cases. They will also give free examinations, working in cooperation with the Cypriot team at the Makarios hospital in Nicosia.
Kyraikides said that more than one million women around the world will be diagnosed this year with breast cancer, and the need for awareness was more imperative than ever, including their rights to reconstructive surgery.
“Unfortunately a lot of women do not know their rights and do not know that they can ask to be operated on by a plastic surgeon,” she said. “We have seen some tragic results from some efforts to reconstruct breasts in Cyprus after surgery.”
Dr Georgia Koulermou the head of the unit at Makarios said this year the team had performed 25 reconstructions and would be doing another 15 before the end of the year.
Koulermou stressed how important it was that women were given an in-depth briefing about the surgery and be kept informed during each step before and after. She said women were owed this respect.
Kyriakidou said the next objective in Cyprus was the creation of two breast cancer clinics in Cyprus where women will have access to all the specialists they need in the same place.
She said that although in the last 15 years mortality rates have decreased by around 20 per cent but the number and age of new diagnoses were increasing. Early diagnoses can save women in 90 per cent of cases, she said.
Health Minister Charalambos Charalambous, who also attended yesterday’s news conference said the government was studying the creation of such a clinic at the Limassol hospital. Koulermou also said doctors in Makarios were also working towards the creation of such a clinic at the new Nicosia general hospital.
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