‘Women with few children are prone to breast cancer’

by: Osagie Otabor

A Professor of Surgery, Breast and Endocrine Division, at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH), Professor Moses Momoh, Thursday stated that women who gave birth to between two or three children are more prone to develop breast cancer.
Prof. Momoh said women who gave birth to many children have lower risk of having breast cancer, than women who give birth to less children.
This, he said, was because women with many children would have their breast sucked more often and allow the women examined the breast.
He spoke while delivering a lecture at the 3rd edition of UBTH public lecture series, with the theme: ‘’ Reducing the Burden of Breast Cancer.”
Prof Momoh who is a former Commissioner for Health said there are increasing breast cancer patients in the low and middle income countries, like Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa.
He listed early signs and symptoms of breast cancer to include nipple retraction or distortion, breast skin changes, thickening like the orange peeling, painless lump in the breast, sores or ulcer in the breast that does not heal, swellings and nodes/seeds in the arm-pit, waist and bone pains with or without broken bones, enlarged liver and distended abdomen filled with fluid/water, paralysis from waist down when it spreads to the spine among many other signs.
Prof. Momoh outlined the causes to include family history, female gender, smoking, menarche and menopause, age at first delivery, regular abortion, obesity, hormone replacement therapy, birth control pills and many other causes.
The former Commissioner recommended free clinical breast examination, preventive mastectomy, free compulsory universal basic education, eradication of illiteracy and poverty, breast self-examination, awareness campaigns on a sustained basis of the disease and strengthening primary health care in all the 10,000 wards in Nigeria as a way for curbing breast cancer.
TheNation