Cancer screening for the marginalised sparked by mobile health clinic drive

MOBILE health clinics are moving around the country to provide marginalised communities with cancer screening and education.

The initiative, created by The Cancer Association of South Africa (Cansa), started this month and has seen a number of clinics operating from the towns of Polokwane, Witbank, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Bloemfontein, Gauteng West, Eldorado Park, Pretoria, Upington, West Coast, George and Rustenburg.

Although the Cape region visits have concluded, other areas will have access to the clinics till the end of this week.

Nearly 400 people visited the West Coast mobile clinic since the initiative began, senior divisional manager for the greater Cape region Dorothy du Plooy said.

“Screening like this is important for marginalised women on farms. For most of them, they have never had access to this screening. They are also seasonal workers on farms, so we need to take the service to them.

“We also need to alert women about the importance of having a pap smear and teach them about self-breast examinations. If they pick up a lump, they can go to their nearest clinic and lives can be saved,” she said.

The clinic provides breast examinations and also teaches men how to do testicular selfexaminations to reduce the risk of testicular cancer.

They offer a Prostate Spe- cific Antigen (PSA) – a fingerprick blood test to help detect prostate abnormalities, access to pap smears for women as well as lifestyle risk assessments to assess cancer risk.

“We encourage the community to make use of this opportunity, and visit one of our Mobile Health Clinics, or visit Cansa Care Centres across the country – get yourself screened, get educated and be informed,” Cansa acting chief executive Elize Joubert said.

The Two Oceans Marathon organisation has donated funds to enable Mobile Health Clinics to provide pap smears.