Today’s Video: Combating and coping with cancer

April is National Minority Health Awareness Month in the U.S. and, hence, today we’re going to briefly examine breast cancer and Latinas.

According to Latina.com “Latinas who get cancer are more likely to die from it, even those types with promising survival rates.” Thus it should come as no surprise that cancer itself is the second-greatest killer of Hispanics based on an American Cancer Society report. Immigrant women face great difficulties:

Lucy Murrieta, an outreach community relations manager for the Sunset Community Health Center in (Arizona’s) Yuma County said, “We are able to screen them, but there’s not much we can do after that.” The center gives primary health services to over 6,000 agricultural workers and about 60 percent of them are women. The center doesn’t ask women’s immigration status, said Murrieta.

Murrieta said that in some cases the women have migrated legally, but if they have been in the country for less than five years they are ineligible for Medicaid coverage. When the women lose work after the farming season, they lose their health insurance, and this makes it difficult to get breast cancer treatment.

The Comadre a Comadre program in New Mexico helps create awareness of breast cancer among the local community. The support network of breast cancer survivors, doctors, and others are a welcome tool for Latinas coping with the illness:

Online Sources- YouTube, Department of Health and Human Services, terra.com, EPA, empowerher.com