‘Reach and Teach’ - Increasing community awareness of breast cancer in Tanzania

Ocean Road Cancer Institute – Tanzania

As part of the Breast Cancer programme, this project was awarded a grant for early detection of breast cancer in October 2022.

Project objectives

The objective of the project was to improve early identification and referral of breast cancer cases in Tanzania by strengthening clinical skills through training of healthcare workers. It also aimed to enhance community sensitisation by conducting awareness programmes for teachers and sharing information with the local population.

Project description

The project leveraged local collaborations to carry out this ambitious project and built upon the work that was supported by a previous project grant focused on metastatic breast cancer, the SPARC grant programme, by utilising materials previously developed. Training was held for 10 days (five groups of teachers and five groups of health care workers) with an additional two days focusing on training healthcare workers on ultrasound imaging.

Overall, the team trained 128 healthcare workers and 200 schoolteachers which significantly exceeded the initial targets, a good indicator of the importance and necessity of this training as the local regional authorities sent invitations and participants responded based on interest.

Both groups of participants received training with an overview of breast cancer including risk factors, signs and symptoms, diagnosis and management. In-depth group discussions on the importance of early detection and community awareness were conducted and presentations on the impact of breast cancer on society were presented, followed by a testimony by a breast cancer survivor. The final session focused upon screening, with a demonstration of breast self-examination (BSE) for the teachers and clinical breast examination (CBE) for the healthcare workers. Finally, training was conducted on breast ultrasound for 12 radiographers.

The team promoted breast health and information about referral to the hospital on social media as well as the toll-free number available for further information, with these efforts reaching another 600 individuals.