The ‘Asha Jyoti’ Women’s Healthcare Outreach Mobile Programme was inaugurated today by Shri Pawan Kumar Bansal, Hon’ble Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Science and Technology and Earth Sciences in the presence of Prof. Y.K Chawla, Director, PGIMER and Prof. N. Khandelwal, Head, Department of Radiodiagnosis. Mr. Pawan Bansal also flagged off a mobile van equipped with a microdose digital mammography unit for breast evaluation, a DEXA scan for evaluation of bone density and a digital video colposcope for evaluation of the cervix.
‘Asha Jyoti’ is a population based screening programme of healthy women in the age group 45-60 years for detection of breast cancer, cervical cancer and osteoporosis. The aim of this programme is to detect any of these three diseases before the individual has any signs or symptoms. The target population will include urban and semi-urban women and will be extended to the rural women in due course of time. In the pilot phase of this project 500 women will be screened in 6 months while in the regular operational phase 2000-3000 women will be screened in one year. This mobile outreach programme is proposed as a model for promoting preventive healthcare for women and providing doorstep screening for three diseases in a single visit.
This project is collaboration between PGIMER, Chandigarh and RAD-AID International, a non-profit organization from United States founded by a team of radiologists from Johns Hopkins Hospital, USA and supported by Philips Healthcare, USA.
Need based screening standards for breast and cervical cancer as well as osteoporosis in the northern part of India will be defined which may aid in the formation of national policies for screening of these diseases. Initially the screening program will be carried out in Sector 38, Indira colony, Colony no. 5 and rural areas of Chandigarh and Punjab. This project is likely to be extended to other urban-rural areas as a part of community based radiology services.
The various departments involved in this collaborative effort include the department of Radiodiagnosis as project manager and departments of Community Medicine, Orthopedics, General Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Cytology, Histopathology and Radiotherapy.