Pretoria - Covid-19 screening and testing formed part of services offered free during a health awareness event in Hammanskraal yesterday.
The campaign was led by Deputy Minister of Social Development Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu in partnership with the Rand Water Foundation and PinkDrive.
Held at Suurman Community Hall, the two-day event offered community members free education on women’s health, a pap smear, free clinical breast examinations, mammograms, testicular and prostate cancer screening.
There was also birth registrations for newborns and sorting out of identification for matriculants.
Bogopane-Zulu said the campaign, in its 11th year, formed part of the department’s national programme. “We’re doing this as a government to ensure that even the poorest communities are able to detect and treat illnesses in time because early detection is what saves lives.
“We want to assist with a bit of everything, from ensuring that youngsters struggling with drugs are assisted, and giving crèches the information on how to go about reopening with necessary safety precautions to put in place.”
The services, according to Bogopane-Zulu, will be available for two days from 8am until 4pm.
“It’s not just about awareness, it’s also about the lives saved. It’s about the service the people can touch, and had we not done so, a lot of women in these areas would have succumbed to these illnesses.”
Chief executive and founder of PinkDrive Noelene Kotschan said there had been a huge improvement in the awareness in communities since it had started with the initiative.
Kotschan said, for the organisation, the main thing was continuing with the awareness drives as, despite being the biggest killer in the country, cancer was still overlooked.
“Cancer as a disease is overlooked by everyone, the focus is on HIV and tuberculosis, even though cancer kills more people than the sum total of those two. It is a silent killer, and even though we don’t know it, it does touch each and every one of us in some way.”
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Pretoria News