Equipment to help beat cancer

By YVONNE KAMBIBEL
WOMEN and girls in West New Britain and the rest of Papua New Guinea will soon benefit from a new mammogram (breast cancer diagnostic) machine, a senior official has revealed.
West New Britain Health Authority’s (WNBPHA) director for planning and infrastructure Paul Tokavai said the machine was a valuable piece of medical equipment.
He said mammograms, which were needed to help oncologists detect breast cancer and treat it at an early stage, were not at all major hospitals.
“This would be the first time for a general hospital in the country to operate this machine and we owe our gratitude to a local women’s non-governmental organisation (NGO) for their initiative and hard work in purchasing this machine,” he said.
New Britain Palm Oil Women Empowering Women (NBPOLWEW) chairman Ruth Jordon-Som said the idea to raise funds to purchase the machine came about after the sad passing of one of their members in 2016 to breast cancer.
“Breast cancer is a killer disease so you can just imagine all the dedication and commitment that the group put into raising funds to purchase this machine so we can save more of our women and girls,” she said.
“We started very small and were fortunate enough to get all the support from our immediate families and local communities and were able to raise K50,000.”
Jordon-Som said they were also helped by local business houses and the provincial government to raise a total of K700, 000.