Rabeya Ferdousi, a 37-year-old homemaker, was passing a happy family life with loving corporate husband and adorable kids despite facing various daily urban odds in the mega city. Everything was going fine for Rabeya except suffering from periodic fever in the last few months. Though she did not care the fevers considering those as simple flu, Rabeya’s husband took her to see a physician. After diagnosis, doctor had found Rabyea is in the last stage of leukemia. Shaheda Akhtar, another middle-aged woman working in a mobile phone operator, suddenly came to know that she got breast cancer. Shaheda and her family were surprised heavily after getting the shocking news as she didn’t feel any kind of pain or other symptoms, she just used to get low fever in the last few months.

It’s about only one month that Mithila got married. After the marriage, her husband noticed that Mithila always got little bit temperature like low fever. When Mithila was diagnosed, her husband came to know that she has been suffering from a lung cancer.

Though Bangladesh is advancing fast towards ensuring a modern health care system to all of its citizens, it is still fighting hard in curbing few diseases including cancer. Cancer is always a deadly disease for both male and female. According to surveys, it is stated that females of Bangladesh are more exposed to cancer compared to their male counterpart.

A recent research found that nearly six crore of the country’s women are in danger of cancer in some extent. Every year, 12,000 women are being affected by only survival cancers and of them, 6,000 ended up with deaths. Oncologist professor Dr M Ehteshamul Haque said currently cancer is the sixth deadly disease in Bangladesh in terms of numbers of deaths annually.

Currently, he said nearly 20 lakh people of Bangladesh have been suffering from different kinds of cancer where every year two lakh more are being affected. Two lakh fifty thousand people of the country died for cancer annually. In Bangladesh, 16.9 percent of women are affected by breast cancer, 15.5 percent by cervical cancer and 11.9 percent by endometrial cancer.

Dr Haque said most of the women come to see a physician with final stage of cancer due to lack of awareness. “When a patient comes to us at her final stage of cancer, we got very little to do. Especially, women don’t aware of breast cancer as they don’t feel any pain in this kind of cancer.

He laid emphasis on creating awareness about symptoms of different kinds of cancer. The women need to see doctors regularly to check whether she is suffering from any form of cancer, Dr Haque suggested.