Breast cancer in low-resource settings: Prioritizing the awareness and access programmes to overcome sociocultural and economic barriers for early detection and improved outcomes

摘要

Low-income and middle-income countries (LMCs), faced with challenges such as socioeconomical, infra-structural and massive epidemics of infectious diseases, are also currently being heavily burdened with chronic diseases that will further affect not only the individual but also threaten the economic development of the communities and countries. Cancers are among the major causes and in 2008, an estimated 56% of the 12.7 million new cancer cases and 63% of the 7.6 million cancer deaths in the world were recorded in developing countries (Ferlay et al, 2010). Worldwide breast cancer is the most frequent cause of cancer death in women and the second leading oncological causes of death in women in Africa (Ferlay et al., 2010; Abuidris et al., 2013).