SASKATOON — While mammograms are recommended for older women, those in rural areas of the Prairies may have to be patient to get one.
Mobile vans run in Saskatchewan and Alberta but not every woman will be reached every two years, as doctors suggest. Sometimes it’s a matter of funding. Other times it is unawareness of the process or its importance that stops some women from having their breasts X-rayed.
Began four years ago
Saskatchewan began its screening program four years ago this month with a clinic in Regina, said Pat Myron, co-ordinator of the program. The screening continues with a mobile van plus centres in Saskatoon and Regina and in hospitals at Swift Current, Yorkton, North Battleford, Moose Jaw and Prince Albert.
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She said the mobile, which is how most rural women get their mammogram, is an 11-metre coach staffed by two technologists who drive the vehicle as well as run the X-ray equipment. It has a “home-like atmosphere, not a sick one.
“These are not sick women. Only women who have no symptoms of breast cancer come to our program. If they have any symptoms we refer them to their doctor.”
The Saskatchewan government pays the annual $2-million budget for the program and it is free to the 86,000 eligible women in the target age group of 50 to 69.
The program uses health department information to send confidential letters inviting the women to come for a mammogram when the van is in their area. Myron said the mobile does about 6,500 mammograms a year, about a third of all the ones done for the program annually.
About 10 to 12 percent of the mammograms find some abnormality, which may not necessarily be cancer.
In Alberta, the provincial government pays $1.7 million a year for its screening program done in two sites in Edmonton and Calgary and one mobile unit. Patti Kindrat of the program said: “we are not as expansive as the programs in Saskatchewan. We can’t cover our entire province yet.”
More screening requested
The Alberta health minister has received a report from an advisory committee reviewing the program and another mobile van has been requested.
The mobile has covered 27 percent of the rural population since it began travelling in September 1991. Kindrat said the recruitment process is the same with the 190,000 women in the target age group getting letters from the program inviting them for mammograms. She said the response rate is excellent and the mammogram abnormality detection is around five percent.
Manitoba does not have a program; but one should be started by the fall, said Suzanne Ring of the provincial health department. Manitoba has 98,000 women in the target age group, she said. Mammograms are now done in hospitals in urban centres.
