Educating Rural Teenagers on Self Breast Examination in Carries, Haiti

Breast cancer is a disease that is very detrimental to many people’s lives. This disease crosses social, economic, and racial lines. Black women such as Haitians are the most prevalent group to encounter a higher mortality breast cancer rate over other races. This issue may arise primarily because Haitians are currently facing a financial burden and are unable to receive high-quality cost-effective care. Consequently, these women go undiagnosed and undetected. According to World Health Organization (WHO) (2014), breast cancer ranked 13.9% of cancer deaths amongst the female population in Haiti, top three of cancers reported. In an effort to educate and raise awareness to teenagers about breast cancer and breast health, we developed a project to teach the teenagers at the Carries orphanage, Mission of Grace, on the appropriate way to conduct a monthly self-breast exam as well as normal and abnormal findings.

Young ladies in Haiti may have a misperceived concept of their ability to acquire breast cancer because they may not have any known predisposing factor such as family history of breast cancer or failure to detect any visible signs or deformities. It is imperative to teach preventive strategies so that these young girls will be able to find any abnormal findings that pose as threats to their lives, become aware of lifesaving resources, and take preventive measures to reduce their risk of acquiring this life-threatening disease. Further, they can be able to teach their peers and family members on the correct way to perform self-breast exams. Emphasizing the importance of self-exams, and other appropriate interventions such as, clinical breast exams is essential to help liable individuals to see if they possess breast cancer early on. As a result, they will be able to control their stage of cancer by seeking early treatment and become a breast cancer survivor.