FAYETTEVILLE : Doctor taking battle of breast cancer home
Posted on Friday, October 26, 2007
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/205616/
FAYETTEVILLE — For Dr. Vina Pesaru, the quest to fight breast cancer and the disease’s stigma in her home country is personal.
The Fayetteville resident and native of India lost her aunt to the disease in 2003.
Bharathi Reddy, 54, was a college professor with a doctorate in philosophy, and had a daughter and a son who are both physicians in the United States.
Still, her cultural upbringing wielded the stronger influence: When she found a lump in her breast, she was too embarrassed to tell anyone until it was too late.
Pesaru’s aunt died within six months of her diagnosis of Stage 3 breast cancer, which had already metastasized to the lymph nodes.
“If she told someone, we could have saved her,” Pesaru said.
India is among a number of industrialized and developing countries that have a lot of work ahead to encourage people to talk openly about breast cancer — or make them aware it even exists — so that more women will seek screening and treatment, said Diana Rowden, vice president of health sciences for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the breast cancer advocacy organization headquartered in Dallas.
Shyness, embarrassment, religious beliefs or fears that disease will lead family or friends to ostracize them stand in the way of saving lives. Some women are intimidated even to say the word “breast,” much less talk about that part of the female body, said Pesaru, a medical doctor who re- ceived her training in the United States as a family practitioner.
And in some countries, people are shunned because of disease in general, Rowden said.
“It might be a fear of contagion, or that the ill person is ‘cursed,’ and she’ll bring bad health on the whole family,” she said.
The Komen organization has a plan to spread its programs globally. India is on a list of 10 countries it will target first, Rowden said, although the Middle East is ranked highest in priority.
On Wednesday, the organization joined with four groups and first lady Laura Bush to welcome Saudi Arabia into the U. S.-Middle East Partnership for Breast Cancer Awareness and Research.
The breast cancer partnership began June 12, 2006, with the United Arab Emirates as the first partner, followed by Jordan. It is part of a larger Middle East Partnership Initiative started by the U. S. State Department in 2002 that has established 350 programs in 15 countries in areas such as education, economic growth, and women’s empowerment and political participation.
The Komen organization is also working in Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Ghana, Romania and Ukraine, Rowden said.
The group has taken its business model and developed a curriculum covering five areas: health education, community assessment, volunteer and organizational management, fundraising and advocacy, she said.
Back in Fayetteville, Pesaru has been working with Komen officials for more than a year. In between volunteering at free clinics and with other health causes, she sits on the directors board of Komen’s eight-county Ozark affiliate in Arkansas. She urged the national group to start the India efforts. She is finding partners for Komen on the India initiative and setting her own deadlines for making things happen.
She seems almost impatient while talking about the need to maintain momentum and making sure efforts don’t stall.
“I want sustainability,” Pesaru said, adding that the more links she forges, the more likely the effort can sustain itself even if she is not constantly pushing.
In the United States, Pesaru has networked with physicians, oncologists and radiologists of Indian descent, and has secured six commitments of financial support, increased patient education in this country and volunteering time for the effort during the doctors’ visits to their home country.
In June, Pesaru traveled to New Delhi and Hyderabad to make connections there.
“You are allowed to take only two suitcases,” she said. So, she jammed her second bag full of Komen literature printed in the 17 languages spoken in India.
Pesaru already has found an Indian company, Vikasa Tarangini Inc. of Hyderabad, to set up awareness and screening programs.
On Monday, Vikasa Tarangini began its breast cancer outreach program, which will include screenings, mobile mammograms and education literature, said its founder, Chinna Jeeyar.
“Now what we did is, we have volunteers in one district — Warangal,” Jeeyar said.
In one day, Vikasa Tarangini screened 101 women for both breast and lung cancer, he said, and 18 of the screenings came out positive for breast cancer.
“We taught them what the cancer is, and how to find out which parts will be damaged initially from the cancer,” Jeeyar said.
Pesaru hopes all the recent publicity that followed Komen’s late-September international conference of doctors, survivors and advocates in Budapest, Hungary, will help push the India initiative along by making it stand out. For instance, in its Oct. 15 cover story, “Why Breast Cancer Is Spreading Around The World,” Time magazine reported that half of all Indian women with breast cancer go without treatment entirely.
During the past two months, Pesaru has stayed up into the wee morning hours so she could make networking calls to India during the country’s business day. She is contacting Indian film stars and the chief ministers and first ladies of the country’s states to find famous people to appear in televised public service announcements, with a goal to air them by June 2008 (the same goal she has set to stage a fundraiser there ). She’s also looking ahead, keeping a watchful eye on Wal-Mart’s plans for India and its potential as an education partner.
“My goodness, I don’t think she ever sleeps,” said Alison J. Levin, executive director of Komen’s Ozark affiliate.