GAZA: Health authorities and charities in Gaza are stepping up efforts to persuade women to be tested for breast cancer, hoping to overcome social stigma in the conservative Palestinian enclave over dealing with the disease.
As part of a “There’s no shame in it” campaign launched by private charity Fares Al-Arab in conjunction with the health ministry, Muslim preachers have been promoting early detection and bakers have enclosed similar messages in bread packages.
A mobile testing van has taken to the road, providing scans for some 150 women a day over the past week at the start of the annual international breast cancer awareness month in October.
“’There’s no shame in it’ is a message of hope and safety for every women, telling them to go ahead and check,” said Georgette Harb, the campaign’s leader.
“There is a category in the community that deals with the issue as shameful, and they deal with breast removal and the word breast as if it was obscene or shameful,” said Harb.
Breast cancer accounts for 32 percent of the cases of cancer among women in Gaza, the health ministry said.
Cancer patients there face multiple problems ranging from poverty, the lack of medication in the territory’s hospitals and some difficulty going for treatment to Israel, the West Bank and beyond due to permit restrictions.
During the campaign, Gaza’s main telecommunications company PalTel bathed its headquarters in pink lights, the color illustrating breast cancer awareness, with more institutions due to follow.
Gaza, a narrow coastal strip that borders Egypt and Israel, is home to about two million Palestinians. Poverty and unemployment in the enclave run high.
Health activists fight stigma to raise breast cancer awareness in Gaza
https://arab.news/gygjd
Health activists fight stigma to raise breast cancer awareness in Gaza
- A mobile testing van has taken to the road, providing scans for some 150 women a day over the past week
- Breast cancer accounts for 32 percent of the cases of cancer among women in Gaza
Iran temporarily closes airspace to most flights
WASHINGTON: Iran temporarily closed its airspace to all flights except international ones to and from Iran with official permission at 5:15 p.m. ET on Wednesday, according to a notice posted on the Federal Aviation Administration’s website.
The prohibition is set to last for more than two hours until 7:30 p.m. ET, or 0030 GMT, but could be extended, the notice said. The United States was withdrawing some personnel from bases in the Middle East, a US official said on Wednesday, after a senior Iranian official said Tehran had warned neighbors it would hit American bases if Washington strikes.
Missile and drone barrages in a growing number of conflict zones represent a high risk to airline traffic. India’s largest airline, IndiGo said some of its international flights would be impacted by Iran’s sudden airspace closure. A flight by Russia’s Aeroflot bound for Tehran returned to Moscow after the closure, according to tracking data from Flightradar24.
Earlier on Wednesday, Germany issued a new directive cautioning the country’s airlines from entering Iranian airspace, shortly after Lufthansa rejigged its flight operations across the Middle East amid escalating tensions in the region.
The United States already prohibits all US commercial flights from overflying Iran and there are no direct flights between the countries. Airline operators like flydubai and Turkish Airlines have canceled multiple flights to Iran in the past week. “Several airlines have already reduced or suspended services, and most carriers are avoiding Iranian airspace,” said Safe Airspace, a website run by OPSGROUP, a membership-based organization that shares flight risk information.
“The situation may signal further security or military activity, including the risk of missile launches or heightened air defense, increasing the risk of misidentification of civil traffic.” Lufthansa said on Wednesday that it would bypass Iranian and Iraqi airspace until further notice while it would only operate day flights to Tel Aviv and Amman from Wednesday until Monday next week so that crew would not have to stay overnight.
Some flights could also be canceled as a result of these actions, it added in a statement. Italian carrier ITA Airways, in which Lufthansa Group is now a major shareholder, said that it would similarly suspend night flights to Tel Aviv until Tuesday next week.
