สำนักงานราชบัณทิตยสภา

The Journal of the Royal Institute of Thailand Volume IV - 2012 6  are also followed up for further assessments. All the funding is raised privately by the QSCBC. The women are screened in groups of 100 as the project rotates around the various slum communities every 3 months. Women who may be in need in the interim months, before the team’s next visit, are offered immediate help. 2000 Baht pays for one digital mammography, ultrasound, medical examination and history. 500 Baht pays for one cervical PAP smear [approx. 50 pounds sterling in total]. Following an initial talk about breast and cervical cancer in the women’s home slum community, the women can register to come into the QSCBC, for the diagnostic tests. The women are given a short questionnaire to assess their knowledge of breast and cervical cancer before the teaching session and again afterwards, to check that they truly understand what they have been taught. Prizes are offered for the best results and other donated gifts are given, ensuring that the essential message of ‘early detection of breast and cervical cancer’ is understood, in a relaxed, positive and non-threatening Figure 3: Magician entertaining the children while their mothers are being screened. way. If a woman cannot read or write, volunteers, who are breast cancer survivors themselves, come along side the community women to assist them in fi lling out the test forms. The presence of the breast cancer survivors is also the best example to the communities, that a good quality of life, post breast cancer, is indeed possible, thereby dispelling all their engrained negative preconceptions. The outreach project is open to all women in communities, whatever their religious belief, and reaches across Greater Bangkok from the slums next to the port to the homes built on the city’s rubbish tips. The story behind the Queen Sirikit Centre for Breast Cancer, its philosophy and outreach projects.