CAUSES, MANAGEMENT AND PERCEPTION OF BREAST CANCER AMONG FEMALE STUDENTS OF FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE DELTA STATE UNIVERSITY
CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1Â Â Â Background to the study
Breast cancer (BCa) is a malignant tumour that has developed from breast cells, which has no cure at present. However, it can be managed with modern technological tools, and one’s life can be prolonged. In the last four decades, with the introduction of screening programmes that efficiently detect cervical cancer in its early stage, BCa has been seen to overtake cervical cancer in incidence and has become number one neoplasm among women (Okolie, 2012). BCa has therefore become a worldwide major health problem. The vast majority of it occur invasively in women (National Cancer Society [NCS], 2013). It accounts for 16% of all female cancers, and 22% of it are invasive. In both men and women, it accounts for 18.2% of all cancer deaths (NCS, 2013). Adebamowo and Ajayi (2006) corroborate the opinion of NCS and maintain that BCa is the commonest cancer among women in the world and in Nigeria too.
Adebamowo and Ajayi (2006) opine that it has become the commonest malignancy affecting Nigerian women. Also, according to Smeltzer, Bare, Hinkle and Cheever (2010), among the ten leading types of cancers by gender determined on the basis of estimated new cases and deaths in the United States in 2004, BCa accounts for 32% and the highest in female while prostate cancer accounts for 33% in males, which is the highest among them. Some of its common threats to physical wellbeing according to Adejumo and Adejumo (2009) include effects of treatments, recurrence and metastasis, fatigue, arm and shoulder discomfort, as well as lymphedema.
Unfortunately, Nigeria (which is the home country of the female students that are the focus of this study) remains ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of cancer detection and care as the testing and care facilities are still very few. The prevalence of BCa within the country is 116 per 100,000, and 27,840 new cases were expected to develop in 1999 (Adebamowo & Ajayi, 2006). In 2005, between 7 and 10,000 new cases of BCa developed.
This increasing incidence of BCa in Nigeria is in line with the situations in other developing countries, and even those advanced countries that used to have a low incidence now record high incidence.
