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Ghana’s maternal and infant mortality figures are heart-wrenching.

In both rural and urban areas, women are the pivot around whom the local/domestic economy revolves, taking on board white color jobs in urbanized areas and menial versions in rural settings, predisposing them to several health hazards.

Breast cancer is the lead cause of all maternal cancer related deaths in Ghana, and with each passing, the family remains the poorer for it.

At the National level, women make up more than half the population of twenty-five million, meaning the economy, which is agrarian in character, hinges on them, as they engage in trading, farming, and any noble engagement that puts food on the table.

The loss of a mother, or a woman for that matter, as the bread-winner obviously threads down the family line, affecting almost every facet of the nuclear family.

As breast cancer regrettably claims lives of our dear mothers, poverty silently creeps in, needlessly tearing apart an otherwise, happy and prosperous family, that could have been spared the pain had the condition been detected early enough.

There is a strong evidence, that breast cancer related mortality translates into poverty, especially among the children she leaves behind.

The education of children suffers each time a mother is lost to the condition, especially in rural areas where women bear the burden of child upbringing, compounded by the likelihood of a man taking another wife and neglecting the children of the deceased wife.

The children, in some cases, end up on the streets as deviants, adding to the national economic burden and thereby worsening the cycle of poverty.

Again women who are afflicted by the condition, and do not report early for meaningful treatment are deprived of engaging in any active economic activity, given its ravaging nature especially at the advanced stage.

Those engaged in white color jobs, conscious of stigmatization, stay off work,  while those engaged in peasant/subsistent farming to feed their family and sell same to earn income, once afflicted, no longer become productive, affecting the economic life of  themselves and their dependents.

Another link between breast cancer and poverty is divorce, a common practice among men who drive off women with the condition even at an early stage when survivorship is assured, eventually disorganizing them as the mainstay of the domestic economy, rendering them poorer in the  process.

But there is some light at the end of the tunnel. HOPE is embedded in regular Breast Self Examination, Early Detection and Prompt Action, and we will all be the better for it, saving our womenfolk, and significantly reducing breast cancer induced poverty.