Men urged to make PSA testing a priority

Men are being encouraged to make getting a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test a priority during 2018.

President of the Barbados Cancer Society, Dr. Dorothy Cooke-Johnson, made this appeal as she spoke to The Barbados Advocate on the sidelines of a recent joint donation by that organisation and CEMIX to the Paediatric Department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

“I implore particularly all the gentlemen, because those are the ones who don’t turn up. You know the ladies are very well attuned, they look after themselves and they look after the children, so it is the gentlemen that I am appealing to come and get a PSA test and make quite sure that you are well cleared every year of prostate cancer.”

Cooke-Johnson said members of the public have sought to access different services offered by the Society during the past year.

“I think that breast screening tries to keep up a regular promotion of people coming for mammograms and it has increased over the years.

“In the section of the Early Detection Clinic that deals with prostate cancer and cervical cancer, we have been putting on Saturday clinics which have been very well supported.”

She added, “We have been going out to companies and offering these clinics in the company and doing lectures as well so we are pursuing that programme so that we have someone out just about every two weeks at a company or school or wherever, in order to give the same message I am giving to you - be vigilant and to carry out early detection.”

Cooke-Johnson further noted that the Barbados Cancer Society has been “doing the best we can and we would really like a good response from the gentlemen this year”.