City, PinkDrive roll out cancer screening

THE City of Joburg is partnering with PinkDrive in the fight against cancer.

They commemorated World Cancer Day by providing free health screening to residents of Alexandra.

Member of the mayoral committee for health and social development Mpho Phalatse called on residents to undergo health screening and learn how to be cancer-conscious.

If cancer is detected early, the chances of beating it are good.

Phalatse said that through the partnership with PinkDrive, the city’s health department would be identifying patients in local clinics, who would be referred to PinkDrive’s mobile facilities for mammogram screening.

“Our partnership with PinkDrive has enabled us, as local government, to scale up cancer-screening services and to offer those diagnostic interventions that we do not have capacity to carry out.”

She added that the authorities would like to see more people come for cancer screening.

“We have 17 clinics in the city that operate for extended hours, and we will be scaling this up to 26 clinics by the end of June,” said Phalatse.

Noelene Kotschan, chief executive at PinkDrive NPC, said “early detection prolongs lives”.

“This year is the start for aggressive awareness, improved cancer services to communities and increased cancer knowledge to the nation. Cancer is on the rise and every citizen is either infected or affected by this.”

PinkDrive announced two pilot programmes that would be rolled out in Gauteng this year.

These new cancer programmes’ primary audience will be young adults.

As a start, PinkDrive will be rolling out cervical cancer screening, only for the sexually active, and breast cancer screening packages/offerings for the young adults.