Nadaleen Singh

It does not dis­crim­i­nate, it is not unique to any coun­try – breast can­cer can af­fect any woman at any age. In 2007 alone 40, 598 women died from the dis­ease, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion. That's not all, as 202,964 were di­ag­nosed with breast can­cer in that same year al­so. With the sta­tis­tics high and the cause for con­cern even high­er, there is a def­i­nite need for the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty to as­sist in in­creas­ing aware­ness while ful­fill­ing its Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Sco­tia­bank T&T Ltd is one such en­ti­ty which has tak­en the ini­tia­tive to in­crease aware­ness of the dis­ease by host­ing a 5K run. En­ter­ing its 13th year, the race ac­cord­ing to Driselle Ramjohn, Man­ag­er of Pub­lic and Cor­po­rate Af­fairs, is sched­uled to hap­pen at three venues si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, these venues are: Queens Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain, Skin­ner Park in San Fer­nan­do and Store bay in To­ba­go at 4PM.

Though the race is for women on­ly, Ramjohn said men at­tend the event to sup­port the par­tic­i­pants. "The name of the event is Women against Breast Can­cer – it's about 0women com­ing to­geth­er to sup­port your sis­ter, your moth­er,' said Ramjohn, in­di­cat­ing that any­one can call Sco­tia­bank if they want to vol­un­teer at the event. The Cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty has al­so lent their sup­port through spon­sor­ship. Every per­son who fin­ish­es the race gets a medal. "It's won­der­ful to see women on­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in this event and women com­ing to­geth­er to sup­port each oth­er." Even though the event is a lo­cal one, pro­fes­sion­al run­ners from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty al­so par­tic­i­pate in the race which has at­tract­ed hun­dreds in the past.

"We al­ways know pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than cure, a lot of what we do pro­motes pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine in the sense of, get test­ed, get screened, ear­ly de­tec­tion, live a healthy lifestyle, be cog­nisant of your body, be aware of the signs and symp­toms of breast can­cer, some of these things can ac­tu­al­ly save lives. "Me­dia is the mode to get our in­for­ma­tion out there. The me­dia car­ries sto­ries of sur­vivors, tips and oth­er in­for­ma­tion on Breast Can­cer. There are ar­ti­cles on how to test your­self, what are some of the risks and what are some of the symp­toms. Knowl­edge is pow­er when it comes to breast can­cer," ad­vised Ramjohn. "Ed­u­ca­tion is al­ways the key, aware­ness is al­ways the key. There are things that you can avoid do­ing that would put you less at risk."