KUALA LUMPUR, March 25 — A total of 79,483 women throughout the country have received benefits via Women’s Reproductive Cancer Awareness Campaign (WCaRe) last year, with 20,793 or 21.2 per cent of them being rural residents.
Deputy Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Dr Noraini Ahmad said out of the total, 8,789 women were Sabah residents with 46.5 per cent of them being rural women.
“WCaRe supports the cervical cancer screening programme and the mammogram test subsidy programme which aims to increase women’s awareness of the importance of cervical cancer and breast cancer screening thus increasing the number of women who come forward to undergo this screening,” she said.
She said this in Dewan Negara in response to Senator Datuk Noraini Idris’ question regarding the extent to which WCaRe has succeeded in raising awareness among women to undergo early screening for the disease, especially rural women in Sabah.
Meanwhile, she said throughout the implementation of WCaRe which started from 2019 to Dec 2023, a total of 6,021 women in Sabah have benefited through all the outreach programmes that have been carried out in various collaborations with other agencies.
Noraini said, WCaRe is currently implemented in 50 registered Nur Sejahtera clinics and 15 Mobile Family Centres across the country, with 57,000 women nationwide targeted to receive benefits in the campaign this year.
She said the National Population and Family Development Board (LPPKN) will continue striving to increase the number of beneficiaries in rural areas by increasing outreach programmes and providing transport incentives to the 50 panel mammogram centres in the country. — Bernama
