As part of the commemoration of World Women's Day in Mali, the MSF oncology project in Mali, in collaboration with the country's health and administrative authorities, launched an awareness and mass screening campaign against breast and cervical cancer in Bamako's Commune IV on March 12, 2022.
This campaign will last throughout the month of March and will be carried out in all community health centers as well as in the referral hospital of Bamako's commune IV. If an abnormality is detected, MSF accompanies the patients for the rest of the examinations and, if necessary, for treatment. Nearly 300 women have already been screened as part of this campaign.
The two Malian music stars Mariam Bah Lagaré and Bintou Hamet Soumbounou, ambassadors of the campaign, were also there and gave their voices to encourage Malian women's access to early detection.
In Mali, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, there were more than 13,000 new cases of cancer in Mali in 2020; mostly breast and cervical cancer.
At the Point G Hospital in Bamako, where the MSF project is based, of the hundreds of women screened for breast cancer each year, about 600 test positive, with 300 cases of death recorded annually. The majority of cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage of the disease, which makes curative treatment almost impossible.
Beyond the lack of knowledge of the disease and socio-cultural factors, the difficult socio-economic context of Mali constitutes a major barrier in the fight against cancer and access to screening services is quite limited, especially in other regions of the country, including the lack of qualified personnel and specialized infrastructure.