Breast Cancer Thrive365, This year’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month theme is Thrive365. Each year, individuals, businesses, and communities come together to show their support for the many people affected by breast cancer. For people affected by breast cancer, awareness is not just about October. And there’s not just one way to have breast cancer. Breast cancer is complicated.
However, in 2023, an estimated 300,590 cases (297,790 women and 2,800 men) of invasive breast cancer, along with an estimated 55,720 new cases of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), will be diagnosed in the US. An estimated 43,780 people will lose their lives to metastatic breast cancer in 2023.
As of January 2022, there were over 4 million women living with a history of breast cancer in the US.
About 9 percent of all new breast cancer cases are diagnosed in women 45 and under.
Though Black women have a lower incidence of breast cancer than white women, Black women are 40 percent more likely to die of breast cancer.
Early diagnosis remains the cornerstone of breast cancer control. When found early, and if adequate diagnosis and treatment are available, there is a good chance that breast cancer can be cured. If detected late, however, curative treatment is often no longer an option. In such cases, treatment may improve quality of life and delay disease progression, while supportive and palliative care should be readily available to relieve suffering for patients and their families.
The majority of women who die from breast cancer (324,000) live in low- and middle-income countries, where most women are diagnosed in late stages due to a variety of factors. These include limited awareness on the part of the public and health care providers, and the lack of access to timely, affordable, and effective diagnosis and treatment.
WHO promotes comprehensive breast cancer control programmes as part of national cancer control plans. The recommended early detection strategies for low- and middle-income countries are to increase awareness of early signs and symptoms among healthcare providers and the public and to increase capacity for prompt diagnostic evaluation (including imaging, biopsy, and pathology services). Breast screening with mammography screening is very costly and is feasible only in countries with good health infrastructure that can afford a long-term programme.
