Research Article
Aditya Bharath
Abstract
Objective: In India, the screening rate for breast cancer issignificantly lower than other countries such as the USA or UK or Australia, leading to more than 68% of breast cancers being detected at stage 3A or later. This paper analyses the reasons for said screening rate being relatively low. Methods: 6 previous papers written on screening barriers to breast cancer were inspected and analysed. A study was conducted by sending it on online forums to a random sample of residents of India. The respondents were female. Their responses are tabulated below: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQxrcbK7uCcKnjjk_6ps8UXcpDGa52jCmRZJ8qrxH9oqNwSzPskW3tespSy5vVsRfyAkoinRkJZotO/pub?gid=781555099&single=true&output=pdf Results: The majority of the women surveyed felt that screening was not necessary and hence did not undergo breast cancer screening; however, women surveyed also felt that they were afraid of being diagnosed with breast cancer, screening seemed too expensive an option, screening procedures were too expensive, and that they were afraid of the radiation Conclusion: Having identified a few of the multiple barriers to breast cancer screening in the Delhi NCR region, a scalable model for a population level organised screening project must be devised which may overcome maximum number of these barriers in the interest of incrementing the screening rate, and hence survival rate for breast cancer in India