AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY ON BREAST CANCER AWARENESS AMONG WOMEN (WITH REFERENCE TO THE MAHAOYA DIVISIONAL SECRETARIAT IN AMPARA DISTRICT, SRI LANKA)

Cancer can be identified as a worldwide health problem. The health sector has been given more attention to the breast cancers, as this is a rapidly growing serious condition among women. Although this condition is fatal, the condition can be controlled with early detection. However, the death rate caused by breast cancer is growing worldwide. According to the data of the World Health Organization, 685,000 people died from breast cancer in 2020. Breast cancer accounts for 12.5% of all cancers reported annually worldwide. There is also a trend of breast cancer being reported in the Sri Lankan society as the increase of 4%. It shows that there is a minimum level of awareness about the early dection of breast cancer among women. Taking this as a research problem, this study was conducted with the aim of identifying the awareness among women about breast cancer. Study area was selected at the Unuwathurabubula village in the Mahaoya divitional secretarial in Ampara district. Random sampling and judgment sampling methods were used to select the study sample. Judgment sampling method was used to select 05 women with breat cancer with the support of the midwife and random sampling method was used to select 55 women over the age of 35 living in the village to get the data after gettting their consent. Data were collected using an interview schedule, observation and through case studies. It was revealed that the highest number of respondents, 69%, do not know the need of doing a self breat examination with age. It was clear that 20% of the respondents had a family hisory for breast cancer too. Aaccording to the case studies, all the respondents were affected by breast cancer in the age of 40-50 years. All these respondents (100%) have ignored the early symptoms for a long time due to the lack of awareness. The main finding was that the majority (80%) of the women who were affected by the disease were under some kind of mental stress in recent time durations before the onset of the disease. It is timely important to educate women about the breast cancers and to stress the importance of self breast examination to detect them in early stages to get rid of complications.