GER505: Healthy Lives Globally Ovarian Cancer is one of the Common Problems that Occur among women: Physiology and Healthcare Assignment, SUSS, Singapore

Healthy Lives

Ovarian Cancer

Globally, ovarian cancer is one of the common problems that occur among women. As mentions by Torre et al. (2018), in the United, states only, the statistic of women has ovarian cancer in the year 2018 is approximately 22 240 reported new cases in that year alone. In Singapore itself, there are 375 new cases reported based on the Singapore cancer registry and this had made ovarian cancer as fifth commonest cancer among women in the year 2017 and second most common genital tract cancer in Singapore (Singhealth, 2018). Early detection and education are important to women in preventing and know the early sign of ovarian cancer.

As mentions by Yamada and Mills (2020) , the common age of women are potentially having ovarian cancer is in their age of ’60s to 70’s. For ovarian cancer, most women are not aware of having ovarian cancer not until the advanced stage of ovarian cancer happens (Yamada and Mills, 2020). In Singapore, women that are at risk to have ovarian cancer is older women and the risk are increases if any family members encountering ovarian cancer but still, ovarian cancer can occur in younger women as well (Singhealth, 2018).

For ovarian cancer, there are some initiatives done by Singapore which is a self-funded voluntary welfare organization to address the matter. One of them is the Singapore Cancer Society. This cancer society is established in the year 1964 in terms to help women to have more knowledge and learn on prevention not only ovarian cancer but overall women-related disease and gynecological (Singapore Cancer Society, 2016). The cancer society is established to provides patient care services to needy cancer patients through its welfare, hospice home care, cancer treatment subsidy, and rehabilitation support program (Singapore Cancer Society, 2016). While from the government there is National Cancer Centre Singapore established and equip with full and comprehensive multi-disciplinary cancer center, is home to the largest number of researchers, surgeons, and oncologists attending to a rising number of cancer patients in the region (National Cancer Centre Singapore, 2020) . NCCS provides a range of medical, educational, and research activities within a single institution, and practices a multi-disciplinary approach to diagnosis and treatment.

Reported by media on ovarian cancer awareness are minimal. Certain media tabloids such as newspapers or websites do publish and provide information on women’s health, compare to news or advertisement through televisions it is not as much as internet reach which is more wide range. For ovarian cancer, it is preventable and curable if women are aware there are signs and symptoms that concern them on health. As mentions by Chien and Pole (2017) additional poster presentations are used on ovarian cancer topics, ranging from the potential role of cancer stem cells in recurrence to retrotransposons in ovarian cancer development. For women at high risk to get ovarian cancer, prevention through identifying early symptoms can lead individuals to get early treatment on ovarian cancer (Temkin, Bergstrom, Samimi, and Minasian, 2018).

Health educations can be provided to individuals at risk of having ovarian cancer to encourage and create awareness on the importance of early recognition of symptoms of ovarian cancer. For ovarian cancer, a targeted group to promote health educations is to all women with reproductive systems and particularly to high-risk women of age ’60s to ’70s. As mentions by Yamada and Mills (2020), women at age of ’60s to ’70s are individual at high risk on having ovarian cancer but it does not limit to the age as mention as there is a risk of younger women can have ovarian cancer at a very young age as 30 or 40’s.

In doing health promotion to create awareness, there will be few barriers had been identified. As mentions by Trepanier et. al (2016), barriers in optimizing health education can be includes cost, time contributed to planning on effective distribution of information and lack of participation from women are at risk.

As ovarian cancer is unable to be diagnosed early, a simple poster with details that include rates, signs, and symptoms, what to expect, and survival rate if early detection is done for ovarian cancer can attract and create more awareness for ovarian cancer. To optimizing information to reach every woman, platforms such as websites, open spaces such as commonplace to socialize, all women-related public health facilities, and education facilities such as college/university website or open space areas. All places mentions will widen the range of information to reach each woman for awareness on ovarian cancer disease.