By Izunna Okafor

As awareness is better created than conceived, a group known as Development Initiative for Technology and Empowerment (DEVITEM) which is a nongovernmental organization anchored on promoting human capital development and providing selfless services to the mankind, has organized an awareness campaign in commemoration of the 2019 World Cancer Day.
The event which took place at Cresent Diagnostics, Niger Drive GRA Onitsha, Anambra State was done in collaboration with the DKM International Hospital and Maternity, Onitsha, and the Cresent Diagnostics, Onitsha, and featured expositions, lectures, free cervical screening, teaching on the HPV vaccine against cervical cancer, among others.
Speaking at the event, the convener of the program and project coordinator in the Development Initiative For Technology and Empowerment, Mrs. Ngozi Osuchukwu said the aim of the event was not only to create awareness on existence of cancer as a disease, but majorly to give the people a detailed and comprehensive information about the dangerous disease as well as provide them with practical health tips and measures for reducing and checkmating the effects, incidences and spread of cancer.
Describing this year's theme of the World Cancer Day as a personal charge for everyone to join the fight against cancer through awareness creation; Mrs. Osuchukwu who is also a lecturer and a librarian by profession, called on everyone to take active charge in the global fight against the disease, even as she advised people to learn how to shun fears and periodically absent from obsessive works, just to go for medical screening and examination of their health status, for quick detection of any disease. She noted that everybody (no matter the gender) and every part of the body is prone to be affected by cancer, and that this can be easily curtailed or cured when detected earlier, before spreading to other parts of the body.
In their separate lucid lectures, the Chief Medical Director of the Cresent Diagnostics, Dr. Emeka Ezeazu, and the Chief Medical Director of the DKM International Hospital, Dr. Ken Muoghalu vividly explained the various kinds of cancers, their symptoms and how to prevent them, and interestingly revealed that there is now a non-gender-based vaccine known as HPV Vaccine that can protect non-sexually-active children who are between the age of nine and thirteen years from cervical cancer throughout their entire life, and which also mightily protects adult who are sexually active from the same cervical cancer.
They also enjoined everybody to take his/her health very serious and consult their doctor or go for medical screening on emergence of any unfamiliar symptom or feeling, as that is the surest, quickest and cheapest way of identifying, treating and preventing any sickness or disease at its earliest stage.
Highpoints of the event were questions and answers on cancer related issues, as well as screening of over 30 women for cervical cancer at the event, free of charge.