A non-Governmental Organisation, the OCI Foundation, has said plans have been concluded to introduce breast and cervical cancer awareness campaign into the academic curriculum of senior secondary schools across Nigeria.

The President of the organisation, Dr Chris Ifediora, made the disclosure at a campaign on cancer held at Stella Maris Girls’ Secondary School, Umuleri, Anambra State, with over 1000 secondary school girls in attendance.

He said the proposal would be developed with support from the Harvard University Medical School, United States of America, as well as some international bodies in Australia and Nigeria.

Ifediora explained that the body decided to champion the cause among young women to ensure they avoided certain living habits capable of attracting the disease in their bodies.

Describing as worrisome, the alarming figures by the World Health Organisation (WHO), that over 8000 Nigerian women out of about 14,000 diagnosed with cervical cancer would die annually, the President called for urgent action to stem the tide.

He said: “We intend to start with schools in Anambra State and will be approaching the appropriate authorities to work out the details and modalities. We also intend to engage religious institutions so that we can find interventions that are not only sustainable, but socially and culturally acceptable.

“We agree that this is an ambitious and potentially daunting undertaking, and can be quite expensive, but we really have no option if we are to be effective in saving the lives of our women.

“Sadly, while their counterparts in most developed parts of the world receive free and universal screenings to prevent and detect these cancers early, our own women in Nigeria and in many other developing countries, have no such preventive systems in place.

“We, therefore, decided that we cannot continue to wait for our governments to take the initiative. We should also not just sit by and ignore the challenges we face.

“OCI Foundation will continue to fight for our people, by giving them the tools they need. We admit that these tools may not be perfect and may not be the best. However, for now, they are the best we have.

“We can continue to accept this unfortunate trend, or just pray over it or worse still, ignore it, and hope that it goes away. Alternatively, we can stand, and fight.”