Women’s clinic in Tondo offers free cancer screening, treatment

BETTER HEALTH FOR WOMEN |The women’s clinic at the Better World Tondo community in Manila offers free medical services, including tests and medical consultations. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

MANILA, Philippines — A women’s health clinic specializing in breast and cervical cancer screening and offering free medical treatment has opened in Tondo, Manila.

Built by food, drinks, and infrastructure conglomerate San Miguel Corp. (SMC), the facility is located in its Better World Tondo community center and will mainly cater to disadvantaged communities in the area.

“For many women in poor communities, the needs of the family take precedence over their own health. Instead of paying for health care, they might as well just buy food, pay the rent, or buy school supplies,” SMC president and chief operating officer Ramon Ang said in a statement.

“This is the unfortunate situation women find themselves in every day. That is why they may often postpone the diagnosis of a serious health problem. With this clinic, we hope to be able to provide women with the proper health care they need,” he added.

Breast and cervical cancer are among the common diseases that affect Filipino women. According to SMC, the clinic will provide free medical services, including obstetrics and gynecologic ultrasound, general ultrasound, and medical consultation for pregnancies and female reproductive health to over 400 women in the Better World Tondo community.

“Apart from giving them access to free and specialized medical care and equipment, we will also work with medical experts to continuously guide them on how to prevent serious illnesses through early detection,” Ang said.

The community center also acts as feeding and learning center and food bank.

Beyond diagnostics and treatment, it would offer “regular health education sessions to teach women from urban poor communities about cancer prevention, pregnancy healthcare and nutrition.”

SMC earlier conducted an in-person survey among 170 women from the community with the results showing that close to 30 percent of the respondents had reproductive health-related illnesses, including breast and cervical cancer, polycystic ovary syndrome, and myomas.

“This percentage may even increase, once more women undergo a thorough medical checkup at the clinic,” the conglomerate said.

SMC also cited the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an agency of the World Health Organization, which said that breast and cervical cancer were the top two cancers in terms of incidence among Filipino women in 2020. The agency logged 27,163 new cases of breast cancer and 7,897 new cases of cervical cancer that year alone, the statement showed.

“Various studies have also shown that low health literacy and the high costs of diagnosing cancer are major problems affecting how this disease is treated and prevented in the Philippines, especially in urban poor communities,” SMC said.

It established Better World Tondo in September 2019 in partnership with Rise Against Hunger and AHA Learning Center. Since then, the conglomerate has served over 250,000 meals and distributed more than 80,000 grocery packs.

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