Prostate cancer is killing over 100 men in Barbados every year, and the Barbados Cancer Society is waging a determined battle to change these statistics.
Honorary secretary of the Society, Dr Dorothy Cooke-Johnson, said Barbadian men were suffering because of “late stage prostate cancer diagnosis” and she insisted a “total change” was needed from late stage to early detection.
Accepting a cheque for $56 000 raised by the British Women’s Club during a charity event at the British High Commissioner’s residence recently, Cooke-Johnson said the Cancer Society’s Men Against Cancer Programme was “an absolutely essential line of combat against the staggering number of deaths from prostate cancer recorded in Barbados annually”. She explained the programme was ”life-saving” and said through it the society was able to offer low-cost digital rectal and prostate specific antigen tests to give early recognition of the problem.
According to Cooke-Johnson, a portion of the proceeds from the British Women’s Club’s Pink and Blue Tea Party would be allocated to the on-going expenses of the Digital mammography programme for which a digital mammography unit costing over $1 million, had recently been acquired by the society. Some of the money will also go to the welfare programme for patients with metastatic or palliative end-stage cancer.
“It will bring financial relief, medication and home-nursing support to supplement the Cancer Society’s welfare programme,” Cooke-Johnson told guests at the Ben Mar reception as she accepted the cheque from Jeremy Browne, Britain’s Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who was on an official visit to the Caribbean.
Cooke-Johnson also announced the Barbados Cancer Society would be working in collaboration with the British Women’s Club on a prostate cancer response programme to increase awareness among men. The organisation will be targeting males from as early as age 14. Members of the club will be going out into areas with large numbers of male workers, such as construction sites, to persuade them to take a lunch hour to undergo the PSA or digital rectal test.
