JAKARTA: Indonesian women are being reminded about the importance of regularly examining their own breasts through an app, in a bid to reduce the number of cases of breast cancer found in the later stages.

Besse Muslia said she has been using, Lovepink Breasties, to examine herself regularly since it was launched in 2015. And the 29-year-old said as a result she has developed a habit of a monthly self examination.

“The application sends me a notification every month for self breast examination,” Muslia told Arab News.

“I learn the right moves to perform the examination from the application,” she said, adding that the application also tells her the right time to examine her breasts.

The correct time, she said, falls on the seventh day afer her period. Muslia, however, said she has found nothing irregular with her breasts so far.

Lovepink Breasties – available on Google Play and the Apple app store – was launched by Lovepink, a breast cancer community based in Indonesia which supports those who are suffering from the disease and those who survived the ordeal. The app also promotes the need for awareness of the cancer, which has a mortality rate of 16.6 per 100.000 population or 19,750 people in Indonesia according to data from Globocan 2012.

Shanti Persada, who founded the community in 2012 with fellow breast cancer survivor Madelina Mutia, said the application was downloaded 1,000 times in the first month of its launch and it now has more than 5,000 downloads.

“We have had very positive feedback for the application, even though our campaign is not focused solely on the application. We also have heard stories that a user who uses the application regulalry was able to detect a lump in her breast and she immediately went to see an oncologist to check it,” Shanti told Arab News.

Moreover, she said, this application has been useful to instill awareness for breast self examination, especially for the digital native, millenial women.

Shanti said the idea to develop the app came after the community had a brainstorming session with an advertising agency on finding the most effective way to campaign for Lovepink’s vision to provide counseling to breast cancer patients and to campaign on early detection. The commnunity has found that in Indonesia, breast cancer is normally detected at the later stage because Indonesian women still have very low awareness on the importance of breast self examination

“We hope more and more women will download and use the application. We want it to be a source of information for women who want to learn more about the health of their breasts,” she added.

The World Health Organization (WHO) also recommends breast self examination for raising awareness among women with high risk of getting breast cancer, as making self examination something that is a habit, also seems to have an empowering effect on women for taking responsibility of their own health.

But the WHO warns that women still need to have a mammography, even though they are examining themselves, as the formal check by trained medical staff will ensure that all breast cancer is detected.

In its cancer country profile 2014, the WHO data revealed that breast cancer was the most common cancer found among Indonesian women. Official figures revealled there was 48,998 cases recorded, with the mortality rate in Indonesia among women standing at a shocking 92,200, out of which 21.4 percent were caused by breast cancer.

Lily Sulistyowati, director of prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases at Indonesia’s Ministry of Health told Arab News breast cancer is mainly found in women aged 45 to 49-years-old.

But she added that breast cancer incidence in Indonesia was not found only in women. The risk of breast cancer on men is one in every 1,000, and data from the national cancer hospital Dharmais in Jakarta showed that there were 38 cases of breast cancer incidence on men from 2011 to 2013, or about 1.2 percent of all cancer cases found in men.

Health ministry spokesman Oscar Primadi said breast cancer was the second most deadly cancer for Indonesian women after cervical cancer and yet, some types of cancer including breast cancer are curable with early clinical detection

“By having early detection, signs of cancer incidence detected at the earlier stage can be treated early and increase the success rate of treatment,” Primadi told ArabNews.

He said more than 3,700 health community centers across the country were trained to provide services in detecting breast cancer although the rate of participants remained low as per August 2017, with only about 5 percent out of the total population target of 34 million women.

The tests are free for citizens listed under the government-run National Health Insurance or JKN managed by state health care agency BPJS Kesehatan.

Nopi Hidayat, a spokesman for BPJS Kesehatan said all procedures starting from early detection such as mammography to breast cancer treatment which includes chemotherapy, radiation fall under the JKN scheme.

“As long as they are all done in accordance to the right clinical procedure and show any medical indication,” Hidayat told ArabNews.