AT THE LAUNCH OF THE SWASTH MAHILA, SWASTH GOA INITIATIVE: All for the innovative iBreast Exam device to fast track early cancer symptoms. Health Minister Vishwajit Rane said it was all to sensitize women about the crucial issue of treating breast cancer early with over a lakh of women who will be checked at primary health centres with the newly acquired iBreast Exam devices. Lighting of the lamp and a minute’silence was observed for cardiologist Dr Manjunath Desai who passed away, recently.
By Our Special Correspondent
To catch early signs of breast cancer in women
BREAST cancer continues to haunt many women and although its incidence is not very high in India compared to the countries of the West, it is still a bugbear for many women living in an urban environment, who’re well-to-do, careless with what they eat day in and day out, marry late, have their children late in life…hence, incidence of breast cancer is highest in urban areas.
But going by what various speakers including Minister of Health, Women & Child Vishwajit Rane had to say at the launch of the Swasth Mahila, Swasth Goa initiative of the SBI Foundation, YouWeCan Foundation and government of Goa, at the GMC library auditorium on October 26, 2021, women from poorer classes in rural backgrounds too are increasingly vulnerable to breast cancer and it is here that the 20 new i-Breast Exam devices the Directorate of Health Services has invested in will come in useful. The Swasth Mahila, Swasth Goa initiative has for its goal the screening of a lakh of women.
Reportedly, these comfortable hand-held devices function along electronic palpation principles but are radiation-free – and make breast examination quick and painless. They are so easy to use that even health workers can be trained to use them at primary health centres across Goa. The COO, UE Life Sciences promoted iBreatExam device creates a color map of the breast with red spots indicating areas in the breasts that may be abnormal and which could be early signs of cancer on the way.
According to Health Minister Vishwajit Rane he got interested in acquiring the devices during a visit to New York when he met Mihir Shah, the founder of UE Life Sciences, who convinced him about the iBreast Exam devices. He was further approached by Shabnam Singh, chairperson of the YouWeCan Foundation (she is mother of former cricketer Yuvraj Singh) and two-time cancer survivor Poonam Nanda who compered the launch ceremony of the iBreast Exam devices. It is not clear if each of the 20 devices cost Rs2 crore or all 20 of them. Interestingly, they’re being bank-rolled by the State Bank of India Foundation under its CSR programs.
The ceremony was attended by a contingent of DHS staff along with primary health centre heads led by Dr Ira Almeida (who is the director of Health Services, Goa has about 35 primary health centres which are managed by the DHS), Dr Anupama Borkar (Head of Oncology department, GMC), Dean of Goa Medical College & Hospital Prof Dr S M Bandekar, YouWeCan Foundation’s Shabnam Singh, Managing Director of SBI Foundation Manjula Kalyanasundaram, Aman Bhaiya (who is assistant vice-president and program head, SBI Foundation), Deputy CEO of Indian Institute of Banking & Finance Sudhir M Galande and Bhaumik Sanghvi who is co-founder & COO of UE Life Sciences).
One learns that UE Life Sciences is marketing the iBreast Exam device worldwide as a more economical option to what has been hitherto used to rule out breast cancer, namely mammogram (said to be a painful and cumbersome procedure and which may miss out very early breast cancer lesions). Current medical wisdom is that the earlier a disease is caught, the easier it is to treat and cure. Especially, in the case of breast cancer when women are constantly presenting with symptoms when the disease is far gone in secondary and tertiary stages and when treatment is more painful, less curable (especially if the cancer has spread to limb nodes and other parts of the body). Both surgery, chemotherapy and radiation are dreaded treatments which are oftentimes said to reduce quality of a cancer patient’s life by merely extending it marginally (depending on the age and immune strength of the patient).
Actually, it won’t be long before even private hospitals and clinics acquire an IBreastExam device to routinely check women for breast cancer with or without their permission. We learn that clinical trials of the device are being conducted at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in the US but the results of how effective they are require further clinical research. Perhaps there will be more evidence of their efficacy or inefficacy once the mission of checking 1 lakh women in the next two years in Goa, using the IBreastExam, is achieved.
Breast cancer in Goa…
To quote DHS Director Dr Ira Almeida in her welcome address at the Swasth Mahila, Swasth Goa function, one in eight women are vulnerable to breast cancer “with 5,62,000 cases and 87 deaths every year.” About 87% of the patients are come “in the advanced stage due to lack of awareness, lack of screening and lack of accessibility to healthcare in our country. In Goa, she said breast cancer accounts for 25% of all cancer cases, women in Goa need to make lifestyle changes urgently.
About the iBreast Exam device Dr Ira, said, “The iBreast device is a fully wireless non-invasive device which accurately assesses and identifies tissue elasticity differences between hard and stiff breast tissue versus normal breast tissue. It is a novel, quantitative and low cost elastic module sensor that can measure tissue progression and stiffness by top down touching of skin surface.”
She said the 20 iBreast devices will be used in primary health centres, ten devices for north and south districts of Goa, respectively. Patients who may test positive using the device will be further referred to ultrasound and mammography as advised by Dr Anupam Borkar who will be managing the program. There will be a medical team tackling and following up cases up to one year