Former Ledzokuku MP, Dr Bernard Okoe Boye, has called on the government to consider partnering with prayer camps and spiritual leaders to ensure breast cancer cases in women.

His suggestion is premised on the assumption that most women who have breast cancer, instead of seeking medical treatment from the onset, seek help from spiritual groups and persons to pray cancer away.

Dr Okoe Boye, who was speaking as a panel member on the Danquah Institute’s Advocacy Chatroom series’ Breast Cancer Awareness Symposium, explained that such actions have contributed to most women with breast cancer reporting to the hospital after the disease has spread and become incurable (stages 3 and 4).

According to him, should the same tactic be used to mitigate maternal mortality cases in the country, it can be used to tackle breast cancer cases, a lot of goodwill come out of it.

He said, “What they did was that in addressing maternal mortality, they realised that some pregnant women, those who were dying, most of them went to untrained traditional birth attendants.

“So two things were done, they train the traditional birth attendant and actually put in a policy where if you bring in a pregnant woman, you’re paid for bringing the pregnant woman to the hospital.

"Because research showed that they were keeping the pregnant women because of the money that they receive and the things that you have to present when you bring your pregnancy.”

Thus, he called for the training of persons who manage prayer camps and other spiritual avenues to detect breast cancers at very early stages.

“And possibly elevate it to an incentive, so that if a prayer warrior or a prayer camp brings a patient to Korle Bu, they know that even when you take [her there], you’ll get a reward. And in that case, then your competitors who are causing damage become your partners,” he added.

Early on in the symposium, he had suggested that the only way to ensure that more women get tested for the cancer was to make it a compulsory requirement for employment and registration for the Ghana Card and other national identification cards.