Breast Cancer is the most common invasive cancer in women right now. It is also the 2nd main cause of cancer deaths in women, after Lung Cancer. Awareness of the symptoms and the need for screening are important ways of reducing the risk of this most common cancer among women. Most symptoms include a lump or thickening of the breast, and changes to the skin or the nipple and its risk factors can be genetic and simply just because you are a woman. Many breast lumps are not cancerous, but any woman who is concerned about a lump or change should see a doctor. The risk increases with age. If a close relative has or has had, breast cancer, the risk is higher. Women who have had breast cancer before are more likely to have it again, compared with those who have no history of the disease. Regular checks and screening can help detect symptoms early. This and many more on Breast Cancer Enlightenment were what Prof Funmi Olopade discussed at the just concluded Handmaidens Women in Leadership Series 2019 which held on Tuesday, 25th June at the Eko Hotel and Suites. It was hosted by its founder, Dr Siju Iluyomade.
Prof Funmi Olopade is a Medical Oncologist and Genetist. She is a Walter L Palmer distinguished service professor of medicine and Director of the Centre for global health at the University of Chicago, Illinois. She is a pioneer in medicine having been involved in mapping, cloning and characterization of cancer susceptibility genes for decades. Her innovative research in women cancers showed that women f African ancestry can be genetically susceptible to particularly aggressive forms of Breast Cancer. She translated her research findings to benefit Nigerians and was the first scientist to publish on the genomic landscape of breast cancer in women of African Ancestry. She works tirelessly to change the way doctors screen or treat women for breast cancer so that every woman has a chance to survive and thrive after diagnosis. She was the key note speaker of the event and she enlightened women on what to know about breast cancer and how they can thrive for many years even after treatment and that breast cancer is not a terminal disease.
“I thank you, Dr Siju Iluyomade for the way you have led Nigeria women to rise up and be who they should be, thank you for leading the handmaidens because without women, the country is not going anywhere. So thank you for your leadership, I acknowledge all the 3 first ladies here, from Edo, Lagos and Ogun State, congratulations to all of you, and also congratulation to the new first lady in the House of Rep, Salma Gbajabiamila who will be leading all the legislation we need in Abuja. So I have come from Chicago but I was really reluctant to come because every time I come to Nigeria, someone wants me to come and do something but I am glad I am here today. It is really wonderful for me to always come back home because home is where I learnt to lead. In America everyone talks about how black people have it so bad but I grew up in Nigeria and I was like we are black and proud and so what I prepared to talk to you about is the role of women in sustainable development. What I want to talk about is really my journey from Nigeria to US and back to Nigeria because I do most of my research job on breast cancer in Nigeria now. When I was leaving Nigeria, it was amazing at that time and I wanted to also go discover America. I saw America and I liked it but as soon as i got there, it was clear that what I was looking for was a way to develop my talent. I was really intellectually curious, always asking questions and always restless.
Very early on in life, my father wanted a doctor in the family, I am no 5 of 6 children, none were doctors but I love my father, we were playmates when I was young, we lived in Igbosere, Lagos Island and all the time he was always saying, look at those women driving those cars, you will also drive yours, then my mother will want me to go to Sandgrose to go to the market and I won’t go, I will go to supermarket because i did not want to grow up in the market settings. Even when I was growing up, as a teenager, I had always set my eyes on things that were going to be out there, why because, in my home my father always pushed us, saying other people don’t have 2 heads, he treated us as the best person because God did not create junks. No matter who, what you are, the first way that Nigerians see you is you are a woman and even going to America as a black woman, who are you? You don’t know who is going to help you to be the best person that you can be, stop looking for that woman or man to help you. You don’t need to sleep with men to get along. So I went to America believing that whatever they are doing i will do it well. So fortunately I was able to go to America and I told my mentor that i wanted to go study genetics. When i got to the US, and I started my work, I noticed how ignorant we were in Nigeria because we don’t have the tools and we don’t have the ability to do research so i decided to do research that US had to offer. I want to come back to Nigeria a different person, so I came home in 1990. More than 30 years later, I have done a lot in research, and the research that I did was on women. Women surviving Cancer. No one wants to grow old. The more children you have the more you are likely to suffer hemorrhage. People don’t want to have many children any more. Most children that suffer such don’t survive to age 5. So as a result of all the advances that we have made in medicine, it is possible for women who have many children to later suffer breast cancer in life. Hardly will a day pass by and I don’t see someone say they have breast cancer. since I went to the US, It just occurred to me that women get breast cancer and the most important risk factor is because they are women.
Men get Prostate Cancer and the most important risk factor is that they are men, so what is it about all this diseases. As you grow older, you are more likely to get it and then people tell me that black women have the worst cancer and nobody is doing research on it, so I lived in Illinois, Chicago and close to my friend, Michelle Obama, the wife of Fmr Pres, Barrack Obama. So Michelle and I will go to churches to talk to black women that we have to be part of the solution to end cancer. when I got there I went to the north sides and surburbs to talk to black women. So I dedicated myself to study the diseases no one cared about because of segregation. I went to medical school free because I had a merit scholarship. The federal government invested in me so coming back to do my research in Nigeria is a debt I owe Nigeria because the society invested in me.
In 2004, we came back and the Medical Women Association Of Nigeria helped a lot. And I said to them, look I have done this work in America and everytime I talk about it, everyone says look ,we don’t want to talk about breast cancer, God forbid it and I am like you ladies, we can’t get ourselves together this way so in 2004, me and the Medical women association got ourselves together and had our first meeting. We got professional women, market women and all, and I said what should we do? They said we should do research, ‘’We want you to replicate everything you have learnt in America in Nigeria.” And that was how we began our work, building capacity and studying Breast Cancer. We started in UCH, we came to Lasuth, to OAUTH and the more we reach this places and churches we found out more women who have Breast Cancer. The more we see, the more we learnt that many reasons led to the women being victims of breast cancer. we went to church and we went to talk to the women and their response is, I went to the community health centre, I went to the dispenser, I went to church and i have been using antibiotics and before you know it, the cancer grows larger and larger and larger, so it was not because this women were not showing up, they were showing up but they showed up and got wrong help. If anyone tells you I have a lump, don’t tell them not to worry, tell them to worry. Because in this part of the world, women always tell each other aah don’t worry, God will do it. Even the doctors here don’t tell you what is wrong with you. when we were in medical school, doctors will be speaking to you in medical languages that you cannot understand. As a patient, how can you take care of yourself if your doctor is speaking lingual? and you don’t understand? You have got to be able to break it down. As an Oncologist, everyone will say it is so depressing and I say, No, I have the best job in the world. Why because I say if I get to treat women on breast cancer and they survive and thrive and they live long, they will be forever grateful that they met me. Sometimes we are not God, but the thing is God gave us wisdom and brain to pursue the best understanding. if you don’t have knowledge and understanding, people perish. You need to know and to have information of what is wrong with you, how you feel. That is why I am encouraging and urging all of you today to join the movement of improving knowledge. Knowledge is power, when people don’t have knowledge, they don’t know what to do. So we started working on genetics, we had consultations everywhere. Everywhere you go to, women have breast cancer because they are women not because of religion they belong to. 70% of medical students in Saudi Arabia were women so it made my research easy. We want every woman in Nigeria to have a chance to survive breast cancer in Nigeria and that is why we have come to do research here. Just like we have made significant advances in those countries. When the breast cancer gene was identified in the research, it turned out that the first 10 families that had this genetic mutation were all families who did not know they were related but they could all trace their roots back to Israel.
Anytime we talk about Breast Cancer, people are always particular about the stigma, from the society, family raising questions of how they will be able to have children. Women have to be an all-rounder, because you hold the society together. They can trace all these things because they care, they do research and they have been funding this research in Nigeria. The challenge I throw at you is that the first study we did we found, our own brca1 and brca2 mutation is very high and yet people don’t want to talk about it. Breast cancer is not a stigma disease, when you have medication that works, not only will women survive but also avoid breast cancer.
We have done more than 20 years of work in Nigeria. Cancer can run in a family and that means, the first thing to do is go and ask your doctor, what is my risk of breast cancer and it is not only within your immediate family, it can come from the mother side or father side. Some women don’t even know they are families. most of the women with brca1 or brca2 mutation did not report any family history. People feel shy to talk about it, but it is wrong. We have to care for each other. What we need to do is we need to create a health care system which will capture all of this. It is about for all us to create all the best infrastructure system, that will readily take care of all these things in order to get the best care in Nigeria. Last year, we started our cancer risk clinic in Ibadan, we are doing it in Lagos and my colleagues and I have built a breast cancer risk assessment clinic.
One out of 3 women if they live long they will get cancer. The reason we have not been talking about it here is because we have not been keeping statistics in Nigeria, we have not been following through, we have not been talking about it. We have to build legacies on truth, you have to trust your doctors, the challenge we have in Nigeria is that we cannot say our doctors have our backs because we have not invested in infrastructures. when a woman has breast cancer, they tell the doctor to run around and get chemo here and there, with that you will not be able to get good outcome, people will say is it fake or genuine because you also buy drugs through 3rd parties and they sell it to you at ten times higher. So we need to talk out, seek help. Early detection is key, don’t be moving from one place to the other, from a church to another, get medical attention, immediately you notice any lump, shout out, forget the stigma so that you can be a cancer survivor.
The University of Ibadan prepared Professor, Funmi Olopade OON for her illustrious career in medicine. She graduated with distinctions in Pathology and pediatrics from the college of medicine, graduating top of her medical class. She was the recipient of many awards. She did her house job at UCH, Ibadan proceeded to Nigerian Navy hospital for her NYSC. She left for united States of America thereafter and studied internal medicine at the famous cook county hospital in Chicago, Illinois where she was named chief resident in 1986.Upon completion of her Hematology Oncology fellowship training at the university of Chicago, she was appointed to the faculty in 1991 in recognition of her brilliance and academic promise. She was later appointed founding director of the cancer risk clinic and became the director of the centre for clinical cancer genetics. She has been recognized for her pioneering work in cancer genetics in the united states and globally. She is married to Professor Olusola Olopade who is a director of international programs at Pritzker school of medicine. They are blessed with many children.
-TAYO FAJORIN OYEDIJI
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