More Barbadians heeding the call for cancer checks

More Barbadians, especially women, are turning up at the Barbados Cancer Society to benefit from the Early Detection Clinic and to tap into the services and programmes on offer there.

President of the Barbados Cancer Society (BCS), Dr. Dorothy Cooke-Johnson acknowledged the above yesterday, as she spoke with media personnel on location at the Courtesy Garage Show Room in Wildey, St. Michael, moments after officially receiving the Hyundai I 10 Saloon vehicle valued at $58 000, which will serve as the Grand Prize in the Society’s 2019 Raffle. The presentation was made by Courtesy Sales Manager, Philip Bynoe.

“I think we are not doing too badly with getting people to turn up. I think they are getting more responsive. The men are the more reluctant to come along and have early detection, but the women are doing great. I think they are doing very well, improving all of the time,” the BCS President commented.

“We have an excellent nurse now who provides a wonderful service for both men and women and we do implore you to come out and come to our very inexpensive clinics. It is just $50, including the lab test needed there and elsewhere for pap smears it’s going to be much more and for the PSA (Prostate-specific antigen) test and the DRE (digital rectal exam), we’ve kept our cost level there for a long, long time,” Dr. Cooke-Johnson further pointed out.

“So I think we are the most economical, but we want men and women to come and we implore them to get an early detection test, because it is very valuable,” she maintained.

In relation to the Early Detection Clinics, they provide inexpensive consultations with nurses or doctors. Also provided as routine measures are pap smears, breast palpations and digital rectal checks. Referrals are made for laboratory assessment, colposcopy, cryosurgery, mammography, urology, gynaecology, oncology, radiology and surgery.