International Women's Day and Mother's Day

Athar Foundation teaching university students about breast cancer. Picture Credit: Athar Foundation, Yemen

This spring, advocacy groups from throughout the Middle East organized outreach events for International Women’s Day on March 8th and Mother's Day on March 21st.
The following is a sampling of events that have taken place in the past few months:

In February, the group Breast Care Kuwait held a regional conference on breast cancer support groups. Partnership advisor Carol Jabari of the Patient Friends Society and Debby Stewart, Volunteer Coordinator for Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Breast Health division shared with the participants their experiences with support groups.... The two day workshop was designed to teach women about the importance of psychological support during cancer treatment and to walk them through the steps of starting a group.

Neel Stallings was recently profiled in an advertisement for Pandora Jewelry in Glamour Magazine’s March 2009 issue, for her breast cancer advocacy work. Stallings is a founding member of the Charlotte, NC, affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure®. She has been a passionate breast cancer advocate since she and her sister were diagnosed and treated for breast cancer. Neel was a speaker at the U.S.- Middle East Partnership’s “Building Bridges for Advocacy” MENA Regional Advocacy Conference in Amman Jordan, and spoke about how to organize and recruit volunteers. See the advertisement here.

To celebrate International Women’s day this year The Egyptian Society for the Promotion of Women and Children’s Health held lectures about cancer pain relief and palliative care on March 5th for oncology nurses at Mansoura University Hospital in Cairo. A second workshop on March 7th taught oncology nurses how to protect themselves when working with chemotherapy agents. The society also convened a meeting for local women to discuss diseases, cancer risk factors, methods for early detection and how to improve life style.The society is preparing for a symposium on Mother’s Day on cancer prevention, methods for early detection as well as how to perform breast self exams and the psychosocial impact of body image and sexuality for women with breast cancer.

Athar Foundation in Yemen held an awareness workshop with female university students on the symptoms and health effects of breast cancer and physical and psychological impact of the disease. The sessions sought to educate women about breast self-exams and stressed the importance of screening. This Mother’s Day, Athar is planning a Safe Motherhood Awareness session which will teach women about breast cancer.In Syria, the Syrian Society of Senology is working with local hospitals to offer women a free mammography on Mother's Day. In addition the society is organizing a ten-day public awareness campaign on breast cancer from March 18-30 at Beirouni University Hospital, a comprehensive cancer center in Damascus.

The Women and Fetal Imaging group in Egypt offered free mammograms every Tuesday in February and March in honor of International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day.

In the United Arab Emirates, the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi is planning to celebrate Mother’s Day by distributing care cards from sons and daughters to their mothers to remind them to perform regular breast exams. The cards will be distributed through local newspapers and magazines on March21st. This will be followed by a breast cancer awareness campaign in April.

Finally, the Yemen Family Care Association will be conducting two general awareness sessions and distribute brochures and posters regarding breast cancer early detection. Also they will place feature articles in two newspapers on the importance of early detection.

Does your organization have anything planned for Mother’s day this year? Post your event here, or discuss it in our Network forum!