Ha, at a recent seminar on heightening people’s awareness about breast cancer treatment, noted that statistics from Globocan 2022 show that breast cancer is first in the number of newly contracted cancer cases and fourth in the mortality rate in Vietnam.

As many as 72,000 cases of breast cancer were discovered in the last five years. In 2022, Vietnam reported 5,538 new cases, while the figure soared to 24,563 in 2022.

“Breast cancer has developed rapidly, thus putting a heavy burden on Vietnam’s healthcare network,” Ha said.

More seriously, the proportion of patients diagnosed with cancer in stages 3 and 4 is high, and cancer patients are getting younger. About 15 percent of patients under 40 and 45 percent of patients under 50 are diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. The disease causes 10,000 deaths in Vietnam each year.

Ha said despite great progress in diagnosis and treatment, prognosis for some groups of patients is poor. For terminal patients, the optimal goal is to ensure life quality, and provide palliative care.

Dr. Ha offers several solutions:

Doctors should give advice on therapies, and regularly give updates about advances in treatment methods and improved consultancy.

Patients need to follow therapies as prescribed. Patient clubs, treatment manuals, psychological and nutrition counseling programs, and palliative care for terminal patients are all needed.

As for the community, it is necessary to increase communications so that patients can easily access information about therapies, increase their confidence, and improve awareness about the need to comply with prescribed therapies, and build a fund to support patients. 

Patients and their relatives need to be confident and must not skip any steps of the treatment process; and should learn about the patients’ conditions and help them feel calm about receiving treatments.

Ha emphasized the importance of discovering breast cancer in its early stages as a solution to improve the effectiveness of treatment. This increases the cure rate and recovery. In many cases, women can still give birth after being cured. This also eases the burden on the healthcare system and saves treatment costs.

It is necessary to run media campaigns to improve women’s awareness, persuade women to have regular screening, and improve health conditions to prevent disease.

Diep Luc