Mariem Dekhili brings us a special episode for October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, featuring Dr. Dana Haddad — a distinguished consultant, interventional radiologist, and Deputy Chief of the Breast Cancer Centre at the American Hospital Dubai — on The Euro Digest.
(00:00) Mariem Dekhili: Thank you so much for joining me today on the Euro Digest, Unfiltered. It’s an honour to have you here.
Dr. Dana Haddad: Thank you so much, Mariem, for having me on this podcast and raising awareness about such an important topic.
Mariem Dekhili: Doctor, you are a consultant medical doctor, an interventional radiologist and a women’s health and breast cancer awareness advocate.
Beyond Campaign Slogans
(00:28) Mariem Dekhili: Today, I want you to skip the awareness campaigns, the buzzwords, the constantrepetitiveness of the topic. I want you to tell me the conversations that we need to be having urgent instead of repeating ourselves over and over.
Dr. Dana Haddad: Mariem, I think it’s a very good point.
Awareness campaigns have been around for over 30 years now and I’m part of them.
I know, just two hours ago, I just gave a presentation as well on breast cancer awareness and statistics and why we should be screening.
How Do We Measure Success? Impact is Key
I think one of the questions that always comes to my head, even though I love doing them is the following:
'How much of an impact are we really making here?'
(00:57) Dr. Dana Haddad: It is always awareness, awareness, but what’s the follow-up?
Impact through Access
What’s the impact or the outcome from all these awareness campaigns? I think part of it as well is, you know, we need to talk about access, access to mammograms, access to healthcare.
(01:15) Dr. Dana Haddad: Just to give you context, you know, for every million women, we have 60 mammograms.
Yet if you go to a developing country, there's only one mammogram per million women. They may be aware that they need to get checked.
Mariem Dekhili: They don’t have the access to do so.
But to wrap things up, will we actually find a cure or will it just be a manageable condition?
(01:45) Dr. Dana Haddad: I think a lot of people don’t know, but if caught in an early stage, breast cancer is up to 99% curable.
Actually most of the patients that I’ve seen here in Dubai, they’re cured. We’re really at a point where we have very good surgery, very good treatments to treat breast cancer. I think the idea is we need to stop diagnoses being made at later stages… but even then it’s a manageable condition.
Women can live years and years and years with, for example, a stage four breast cancer, which is non-curable. It's curable up to stage three.
(02:14) Dr. Dana Haddad: So absolutely, I think it can be cured. I think the main driver is going to be ‘early detection.’
Access, Detection, and Government Policy
Early detection and also policies and laws that enable women to get the access that they really need.
Mariem Dekhili: Wonderfully put. Thank you so much.
Dr. Dana Haddad: Thank you so much.
Mariem Dekhili: Thank you so much for joining me today on an episode of the Euro Digest, Unfiltered. I hope to have you here again.
Dr. Dana Haddad: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
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