Abstract
Despite being considered a potentially curable disease, breast cancer is the most frequent cause of cancer death in women worldwide, establishing the following paradox: high curability versus high mortality. Among the conditions conducive to this situation, such as difficult access to diagnosis and treatment and social support by the State, there is the need to discuss the impact of women’s caregiving, the backbone of the female gender role, on self-care in health. Gender has a powerful effect on determining health status: it may limit different rates of exposure to certain risks, different patterns in the quest for treatment or differential impacts of the social and economic determinants of health. The study shows the results of a qualitative methodology with nine women aged 48 to 74 years with varying levels of schooling and socioeconomic status, who had breast cancer at some stage of adult life and who regularly attend a nongovernmental organization (NGO) to support women with breast cancer, in the city of Niteroi (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). The participants’ discourses evidenced the idea of the primacy of the caregiving, the idealized image of the warrior woman and their self-neglect and State’s care as elements of the potential impact on the choices of these women concerning self-care, and consequently in their experiences of illness.
Highlights
This work begins with the “breast cancer paradox”: high curability versus high mortality
The study shows the results of a qualitative methodology with nine women aged 48 to 74 years with varying levels of schooling and socioeconomic status, who had breast cancer at some stage of adult life and who regularly attend a nongovernmental organization (NGO) to support women with breast cancer, in the city of Niterói (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
In resource-poor regions with weak and fragmented health systems, breast cancer contributes to the preservation of the poverty cycle [[3], p. 847], since: 1) Most women who die of breast cancer in the world live in low- and middle-income countries
Summary
This work begins with the “breast cancer paradox”: high curability versus high mortality. Breast cancer is a potentially curable disease if detected early. Access to breast cancer diagnosis and treatment is inadequate in poorer countries. 847], since: 1) Most women who die of breast cancer in the world live in low- and middle-income countries. In resource-poor regions (including Brazil) with weak and fragmented health systems, breast cancer contributes to the preservation of the poverty cycle [[3], p. This situation is a widely preventable tragedy for hundreds of thousands of women and their families
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