When my mother was detected with breast cancer in 1990, cancer of the cervix was the most common type of cancer among women in India. Today breast cancer has overtaken it,” says Dr. K. Govindaraj. The adoption of a high-fat Western diet and delayed motherhood are among the reasons for the rise in breast cancer cases.
Creating awareness about the disease is therefore something of a personal mission to Dr. Govindaraj as the managing trustee of the non-profit Dr. K. Shantha Breast Cancer Foundation, named after his mother.
Bringing home the message that breast cancer can be cured if detected early, the foundation, established in 2005, is routinely involved in awareness campaigns about the disease in Tiruchi and neighbouring districts.
As part of the worldwide observance of October as the ‘pink month’ with awareness campaigns on breast cancer, the foundation is hosting ‘21 K Mammo Run’, a 21-kilometer half marathon from Srirangam Boys Higher Secondary School to Anna Stadium with a cash prize of Rs. 2 lakhs, and a non-competitive 5-kilometer run from Campion Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School to Anna Stadium on October 12.
It also operates a mobile screening service called Mammo Bus, which has screened 3,000 women through mammography (a low-dose X-ray of the breast) so far. The foundation is waiting to achieve the target of 10,000 cases in order to publish the results in an international journal.
Dr. Govindaraj’s wife, gynaecologist Dr. Hemamalini, has been instrumental in personally conducting up to 300 awareness campaigns from 2005-2010.
This year, Dr. Govindaraj has inaugurated the Tiruchi branch of Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Centre, an oncology services provider based in Bakersfield, California.
Inspiration
“My mother never really expressed a wish for this sort of foundation,” says Dr. Govindaraj, “but there were many other elements at work when we set it up in 2005,” he adds.
“My grandfather [Dr. Viswanathan, among the city’s first MBBS practitioners] had an idea to start a cancer hospital in Tiruchi, but couldn’t do it (he died in 1984). My father Dr. Kanakaraj and my uncle Dr. Jayapal started the first cancer hospital south of Chennai in 1990. So from then on, we were more focused towards cancer treatment. It was a coincidence that my mother developed breast cancer.”
The only treatment for breast cancer in the 1990s was modified radical mastectomy (surgical removal of the breast) even if it was in Stage 1, which Dr. Shantha underwent in Chennai.
But when the cancer recurred in 1994, she was very reluctant to undergo chemotherapy for the second time. She gave up after two sessions, and the cancer spread to her brain and liver. Dr. Shantha succumbed to the disease on October 8, 1995.
Spreading awareness
Explaining the magnitude of the problem, foundation secretary and radiation oncologist Dr. K.N. Srinivasan says that a preliminary door-to-door survey conducted with the help of students found that villagers were more open to discussing breast cancer than elite families in Thillai Nagar.
“We even had to re-educate doctors about breast cancer,” he says, “as the Indian MBBS curriculum tends to fail students who identify a lump as cancer outright, so we had to change that mindset.”
The team believes that the easiest way to spread awareness is to teach women breast self-examination.
“Our foundation tries to show that breast cancer need not be a death sentence. We have at least 300 survivors registered with us as support group team leaders to keep patients and their families motivated about completing the treatment,” says Dr. Govindaraj.
Free palliative care is given at the 7-bed Shanthallaya Hospice, a non-profit institution run by the G. Viswanathan Speciality Hospitals, in Thillai Nagar.
It is easy to see that the indomitable spirit of Dr. K. Shantha, “a tough woman,” as Dr. Govindaraj remembers her, permeates the efforts of the eponymous foundation.
“If everyone does something for the community rather than just expecting the community to do something for them, there will be better results,” says Dr. Govindaraj. “We want more foundations like this to come up.”
