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Release Date: 9/25/2008
Breast Center Helps Save Women in Africa
Judi Elston (left), manager of St. Anthony’s Breast Center, accepts a token of gratitude from Ify Anne Nwabukwu, president and CEO of the African American Women’s Cancer Awareness Association, for the hospital’s donation of a mammography unit.
Enugu State Teaching Hospital in Nigeria and St. Anthony’s Medical Center in south St. Louis County have become unlikely allies in the fight against breast cancer.
The African hospital lacked a mammography unit. St. Anthony’s had one it no longer used. Ify Anne Nwabukwu, president and CEO of the African American Women’s Cancer Awareness Association, brought the two together.
“I never thought much about breast cancer,” said Nwabukwu, a native of Nigeria and a Maryland resident since 1976. “As a registered nurse, I was aware of recommended guidelines regarding monthly breast self-examinations, yearly mammograms and the roles of ultrasound and MRI in detecting the disease. But it never hit home until my mother was diagnosed in 1989.”
Nwabukwu’s mother was visiting her from Nigeria, when an exam revealed a lump in her breast. After diagnostic tests revealed breast cancer, a mastectomy was performed, followed by cancer therapies that extended her life another 18 years. She died last year following a recurrence of the cancer. A close friend of Nwabukwu received the same diagnosis in the fall of 2002. The breast cancer since has metastasized to her liver.
“Watching two women I loved struggle with this disease, I realized that African women need more education and more information about breast cancer,” Nwabukwu said. “We simply don’t talk about it, and we need to break the wall of silence.”
So, four years ago, Nwabukwu gathered together a couple of dozen African American women who lived in the Washington D.C. area to form the African American Women’s Cancer Awareness Association. Not content to spread their awareness message only to American women, the group recently returned from its second medical mission trip to Enugu, Nigeria, where they visited the Enugu State Teaching Hospital.
“Hundreds of people from nearby towns and villages line up outside the hospital every day, seeking treatment,” Nwabukwu said. “We saw so many women walking around with visible breast tumors that it was mind-blowing. These women need help! When I saw this, I said, ‘God, please let me make a difference!’ ”
When Nwabukwu returned home, she sent an e-mail to the National Consortium of Breast Centers, asking if anyone had a mammography unit they could donate to the Nigerian hospital. To her complete surprise she received an affirmative response.
“I immediately responded, saying, ‘I just happen to have the piece of mammography equipment you need,’ ” said Judi Elston, manager of the Breast Center at St. Anthony’s. “We converted to digital mammography, and don’t use the traditional unit anymore – it is obsolete in our stage of advanced technology. It has no value to us, but tremendous value to them. This will be their first mammography unit. What an impact that will make in their country, to be able to detect breast cancer in women before they develop a lump.”
Elston put Nwabukwu in touch with the manufacturer’s representative in Africa, so she could obtain information about the installation, operation and maintenance of the unit, as well as training of health care professionals to perform mammograms.
Nwabukwu, who said she “had no clue anyone would actually respond to my request,” accepted the Breast Center’s donation at St. Anthony’s on Sept. 24. “I am so happy and excited about this, and I thank God for His blessings,” Nwabukwu said. “You will never know what this donation means to us.”
Nwabukwu is hoping to form an ongoing exchange program, allowing Nigerian health care professionals to come to St. Anthony’s for training in the latest in cancer care and St. Anthony’s employees and staff members to teach at the Nigerian hospital.
“We are forever grateful that the American people have such big hearts!” Nwabukwu said. “With this donation from St. Anthony’s, we will be able to live our organization’s motto – ‘Saving lives, one woman at a time.’ ”
St. Anthony’s Breast Center is located at 12700 Southfork Road, Suite 153, in St. Anthony’s Medical Plaza. For more information about the Breast Center, call 314-525-3400 or visit the Breast Center online.
For information, please call our Health Access Line at 314-ANTHONY (268-4669) or 800-554-9550 or visit our find a physician online.
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