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Hong Kong should offer free breast cancer screening as a life-saving priority
- Free screening is offered for colorectal cancer but not lung or breast cancer, even though these are the three most common cancers in Hong Kong
- For breast cancer in particular, early detection can make a huge difference to successful, low-cost treatment and survival
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Australian-born Peter Kammerer has lived and worked in Hong Kong for more than 30 years, joining the Post in 1988.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, Beijing has stressed that tough preventive measures are necessary as nothing is more important than life. In Hong Kong, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has also made national security and housing priorities.
What then, of public healthcare and diseases that kill and sicken far more people than the coronavirus each year? For one, providing free cancer screening could save and prolong thousands of lives.
The speed at which vaccines were developed to lessen or prevent Covid-19 symptoms prove what scientists can achieve if they have the resources. Decades of research into cancer has generally not made such effective headway.
Ways have been found to lower risks through changing lifestyles, avoiding exposure to known cancer-causing substances and taking medicines and vaccines to prevent them from developing. Screening is the best way to detect and treat cancer early.
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