How beating breast cancer changed the lives of four women in the Middle East

Participants take part in the Pink Caravan Ride in Dubai on February 28, 2018, a UAE breast cancer initiative. (AFP/File Photo)
Short Url
Updated 30 October 2021
Follow

How beating breast cancer changed the lives of four women in the Middle East

  • Gloria Halim, Cristina Polo, Sapna Venugopal and Bharti Rao have one thing in common: they are breast-cancer survivors
  • October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, when survivors fundraise, offer support and encourage women to self-check

DUBAI: Gloria Halim, Cristina Polo, Sapna Venugopal and Bharti Rao come from very different backgrounds but they have one thing in common: they are all breast-cancer survivors who emerged from their battles with the disease with a new outlook on life and a desire to help others.

The four women, who are in their 40s and 50s, are among the millions of women worldwide each year who are diagnosed with some form of breast cancer and embark on a difficult journey of surgeries, chemotherapy and radiotherapy to overcome what can be a fatal illness.

Beyond the physical side effects of the treatments, the experience of fighting and beating cancer can have a profound emotional effect on women. Indeed, medical practitioners say the vast majority of patients emerge from treatment with a greater willingness to extend a helping hand to others.

Many also take what is often seen as a second chance as a sign to change the direction of their lives, taking on new challenges or switching to a new career path.

British citizen Gloria Halim, for example, was working in the information technology sector in the UK when she discovered she had breast cancer 14 years ago. Now in her mid-40s, she is a chief wellness officer in the corporate world and a certified holistic health practitioner living in Dubai.




Breast cancer, known to be the most common cancer in women worldwide, is the leading cause of death among Saudi women, according to a retrospective epidemiological study conducted in 2012. (Shutterstock)

“For me, the key information is that prevention is possible and is important,” Halim told Arab News this month, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. “Having gone through what I’ve been through, there is no way I want anybody else to go through it.”

Halim said she has come to appreciate the importance of good physical, emotional and mental health in helping to reduce stress and maintain a strong immune system.

“We are not built to be in fight-or-flight mode constantly,” she said. “It takes a long time to get to the point where the human body says: ‘I’ve had enough. I can’t move.’ The immune system goes down, inflammation of the bodily organs goes up, an environment for disease grows.”

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in the world. As of December last year, 7.8 million surviving women had been diagnosed with breast cancer in the past five years, according to the World Health Organization. In 2020, about 2.3 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer worldwide and 685,000 died from the disease.

In Saudi Arabia, of the 24,485 cases of cancer recorded in 2018, 14.8 percent involved breast cancer, making it the most common form of cancer in the Kingdom. Of the 4,707 cancer cases recorded in the UAE in the same year, 22.4 percent were breast cancer.




L-R: Bharti Rao, Cristina Polo and Sapna Venugopal who all beat breast cancer. (Supplied)

While there was little improvement in breast cancer mortality figures between the 1930s and 1970s, survival rates began to rise in several countries from the 1980s on, thanks to early detection programs and new and improved treatments.

A growing body of research and significant medical advances continue to improve the prognosis for millions of women with the disease. But perhaps the most important development has been the increase in public awareness and the willingness of women to check themselves regularly and seek help early if they notice a potential problem.

Cristina Polo, from France, was 43 and living in Dubai when she noticed a lump in her breast in 2018. Determined to see her daughter, who was six at the time and the youngest of three siblings, grow up and have children of her own, she sought treatment immediately.

“Since cancer treatment, I have had a thirst for life,” she told Arab News. “I have this urge to do things in life that I kept postponing or put aside, saying I would do them later.”

Like Halim, Polo viewed her victory over cancer as an opportunity to change course. After completing her treatment, she resigned from a senior position in Dubai’s hospitality industry, began a course in digital marketing, earned a certificate in teaching English as a foreign language, and established a blog, called Cancer Majlis, devoted to cancer awareness.

INNUMBERS

* 2.3m women diagnosed with breast cancer worldwide in 2020.

* 685,000 breast cancer deaths globally in 2020.

(Source: WHO)

She said she spent many years before she was confronted with cancer worrying about “what ifs” and putting off making changes.

“Then, boom, the diagnosis came,” Polo said. “Suddenly, all this ‘what if, what if, what if’ became ‘what else, what else, what else can I explore?’”

Polo moved to Paris last year, where she teaches English at a French hospitality school and is a consultant for the travel and hospitality industry. She also enjoys sculpting and painting in her spare time and does voluntary work with recovering cancer patients, helping them to plan their post-cancer lives by developing new skills in the arts.

Sapna Venugopal had a similar desire to help others following her cancer diagnosis in Sept. 2017 at the age of 46 while living in Dubai. So she began volunteering to visit patients undergoing chemotherapy in the city, and donating a portion of her income as a jewelry designer and from furniture restoration to a cancer charity in her native India.

Despite the many awareness campaigns launched by governments and charities the world over, women are still often left in shock when they receive a breast cancer diagnosis.




Pink umbrellas decorate the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health in the capital Beirut as part of a national campaign for the public awareness of breast cancer. (AFP/File Photo)

“At the very beginning everybody thinks they have just been handed a death sentence, which they haven’t,” Elsbeth Bentley, a nurse at Dubai’s Mediclinic City Hospital, told Arab News. She is one of the few specialist breast cancer nurses in the UAE, who undergo an extra year of training to teach them how to help with the specific needs of breast cancer patients, with a main focus on communication skills.

“Research shows that after the word ‘cancer’ has been mentioned in a meeting with a doctor, most people will only retain some 20 percent of what they are told, because it freezes the brain and there is this feeling that it is happening to somebody else and they are not connected with it,” Bentley added.

Regardless of background and social status, all women react to the diagnosis in a similar way, said Bissi Punnackel-Sivaraman, a breast care nurse at King’s College Hospital in Dubai.

“It is a stressful period,” she told Arab News. “Most of the time patients will be in shock upon diagnosis, followed by anger, anxiety, fear and loneliness. Some of the patients will be in denial and it will take some time for them to accept the diagnosis, as it happens unexpectedly.

“Initial reaction will be more or less the same. But taking it in and coping with the treatment can be slightly different, as each individual is unique and it can depend on their personal, family and occupational backgrounds.”

Bharti Rao, from India, recalled feeling “absolutely numb” and slipping into a state of denial when cancer was diagnosed in 2018, the year she turned 40, while living in Dubai.




Dubai's Burj Khalifa is lit up in pink to raise awareness and funds to fight breast cancer. (AFP/File Photo)

“But I didn’t sit on it for long because I understood that the more I go into denial, the more I am being pushed toward darkness,” she told Arab News.

Rao said she drew much of her resolve to seek treatment and beat the disease from her husband, parents, daughters and in-laws.

“I fought physically but they fought with me mentally and physiologically,” she said. “And that is where my battle was won. My day started with a smile and ended with gratitude.”

Rao worked in the banking sector but left her job before the cancer diagnosis and had worked as a volunteer helping children with autism. After beating the disease she developed a new outlook on life and is now a certified holistic lifestyle coach who provides her services for free to friends and relatives in Dubai and other people they refer to her, helping them during their emotional journeys while fighting cancer.

There is clearly an overriding sense among many breast-cancer survivors that they have been given a second chance in life to take on fresh challenges and pursue experiences they had long put on hold. Many also emerge with a sense of gratitude and a desire to give something back in some way.

“They want to see some good come out of it,” said nurse Bentley. “Life is not going to go back to exactly how it was. Something in them has changed and that means they don’t want to accept the things they accepted before.”


How falling cases of tuberculosis in Iraq reflect a wider health system recovery

Updated 7 sec ago
Follow

How falling cases of tuberculosis in Iraq reflect a wider health system recovery

  • Iraq has halved its tuberculosis rate over the past decade through tech-driven diagnosis and expanded mobile health services
  • AI-supported X-rays and GeneXpert machines now detect TB faster, even in remote areas and among high-risk populations

DUBAI: Sameer Abbas Mohamed, a Syrian refugee from Qamishli who fled to Iraq in 2013, was terrified when his one-year-old son, Yusuf, was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He knew the disease was life-threatening — and highly contagious.

“I have two older boys, and I was scared they would catch the disease,” said Mohamed, who lives in Qushtapa refugee camp for Syrians in Irbil, home to most of the 300,000 Syrian refugees in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

“Yusuf was also very young and I worried about losing him.”

An IOM medic checks a little girl at the family's rented house in Kirkuk. (Photo: Anjam Rasool/IOM Iraq, 2019)

Mohamed consulted several doctors when Yusuf began coughing. Scans revealed a mass on the right anterior wall of his chest. A diagnosis was finally made when a general surgeon reported the case to Iraq’s National TB Program.

Following surgery to remove the mass, Yusuf returned home, where nurses delivered an all-oral regimen, monitored his treatment, tracked his progress, offered support, and educated the family on isolation measures to prevent the disease’s spread.

Within six months, Yusuf was cured.

His journey reflects the progress made in combating TB in Iraq, especially the drug-resistant variant that has emerged in the conflict-affected country — which until recently had the region’s highest prevalence of TB cases.

Iraq’s NTP, supported by the International Organization for Migration, the Global Fund, and the World Health Organization, is tracking TB among displaced communities using advanced diagnostic technologies and artificial intelligence.

Giorgi Gigauri, IOM Iraq’s chief of mission, told Arab News that TB detection and timely treatment have helped to drive a significant decline in cases in Iraq.

This was achieved, he said, through a tech-driven strategy, including the installation of the advanced 10-color GeneXpert detection machine across Baghdad, Basrah, Najaf and Nineveh, enabling faster diagnoses.

IOM’s mobile medical teams were also equipped with 10 AI-supported chest X-ray devices, known as CAD4-TB, which can detect the disease in seconds — even in high-burden areas such as refugee camps and prisons.

FAST FACTS

• TB is caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterium that primarily affects the lungs.

• It spreads through airborne droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

• Symptoms include a persistent cough, chest pain, fever, night sweats and weight loss.

• With proper treatment using antibiotics, TB is curable, though drug-resistant strains exist.

Routine screenings by these mobile units helped to increase the detection rate of drug-resistant TB from 2 percent to 19 percent, and drug-sensitive TB from 4 percent to 14 percent between 2019 and 2024, according to IOM data.

After screening, sputum samples are taken to central labs, making testing accessible for those unable to travel or living in areas with limited health care access.

Thanks to these efforts, TB cases in Iraq have fallen dramatically — from 45 to 23 cases per 100,000 people between 2013 and 2023. The current prevalence is 15 per 100,000, with an estimated mortality rate of three per 100,000.

In many ways, these numbers reflect Iraq’s wider public health recovery after decades of instability, including the crippling sanctions of the 1990s, the successive bouts of violence that followed the 2003 US-led invasion, and the 2014 rise of Daesh.

“Despite years of instability, progress made in the detection, treatment and prevention of the spread of TB restored trust in health care services by strengthening infrastructure and extending care to vulnerable groups like prisoners and displaced populations,” Gigauri told Arab News.

“It also supports upskilling of health professions and creates sustainable systems that can support responses to other communicable diseases.

“Efforts made by all partners under NTP have contributed to national recovery by addressing urgent health needs and laying a foundation for timely detection of preventable and treatable diseases.”

Despite a period of relative stability, Iraq still faces considerable humanitarian pressures amid a fragile economy and an unpredictable security landscape. According to UNHCR, more than 1 million Iraqis remain internally displaced, with 115,000 living in 21 camps across the Kurdistan Region.

Roughly five million displaced people have returned to their towns and villages since Daesh’s territorial defeat in 2017. But these areas often lack basic infrastructure, increasing the risk of TB outbreaks.

In Mosul — Iraq’s second-largest city, which endured three years under Daesh — those unable to afford housing live in overcrowded settlements, where malnutrition and exposure to the elements weaken immunity.

The mobile medical teams have been a game-changer for these vulnerable communities.

Digital X-rays equipped with CAD4-TB, powered by AI, now enable quick and accurate TB detection — a stark improvement from the three-month wait many patients once faced for CT scans.

This technology also reduces radiation exposure. A single CT scan can expose patients to the equivalent of 300 X-rays, according to Dr. Bashar Hashim Abbas, manager of the Chest and Respiratory Diseases clinic in Mosul.

Abbas said that mobile medical teams and digital X-ray devices have been vital for reaching remote communities and detainees who lack clinic access.

“The mobility of these machines helped us examine prisoners who were difficult to bring into the clinic due to complex security protocols. We discovered many cases, especially multidrug-resistant TB patients, in this way,” Abbas told Arab News.

“We conduct X-rays and take sputum samples for further lab investigations. Therefore, we take the diagnostic tools to them as much as we can, scaling up TB prevention and providing treatment.”

A centralized disease surveillance system, District Health Information Software 2, allows lab results to be registered and coordinated across labs, facilities, and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, improving routine TB reporting.

IOM’s TB services reached 6,398 people in 2024, with 120 drug-resistant TB cases treated. These efforts have been bolstered by $11 million in Global Fund support since 2022.

A key breakthrough has been shifting the treatment of multidrug-resistant TB from a burdensome series of injections to a simpler, all-oral regimen, which shortened recovery time from two years to six months and significantly improved outcomes.

“Previously, treatments involved daily injections for at least six to eight months, which were difficult to sustain for patients and treatment outcomes were relatively poor at 50 percent,” Grania Brigden, senior TB adviser at the Global Fund, told Arab News.

“However, the innovation in treatment through the all-oral regimen has reduced treatment to six months with a 75 percent to 80 percent success rate.”

Although no new TB vaccines are currently available, researchers are optimistic about developing more effective ones in the next five years. The existing BCG vaccine offers only partial protection and is less effective for adults and adolescents, who are more prone to transmission.

New vaccines are vital for achieving the WHO’s End TB Strategy goals — reducing TB mortality by 95 percent and incidence by 90 percent by 2035. Brigden said ongoing investment is key to meeting these targets.

Meanwhile, the Global Fund is focused on halting TB’s spread in Iraq. “We have invested significantly in commodity security to ensure that everyone who tests positive or is notified of TB is put on treatment,” said Brigden.

Thanks to these steps, many — like young Yusuf — are alive today who might otherwise have succumbed without proper care.

“The discussions of tuberculosis we had with the nurse who gave the medication had a positive impact on us,” said Yusuf’s father, Mohamed.

“The nurse gave us information on how to isolate him after the first two to three weeks. He reassured us that if we gave him the medication regularly and made sure there were no gaps, everything would be getting well.

“This made us less scared.”
 

 


Anxiety clouds Easter for West Bank Christians

Updated 59 min 33 sec ago
Follow

Anxiety clouds Easter for West Bank Christians

  • ‘There is a constant fear, you go to bed with it, you wake up with it’

ZABABDEH: In the mainly Christian Palestinian town of Zababdeh, the runup to Easter has been overshadowed by nearby Israeli military operations, which have proliferated in the occupied West Bank alongside the Gaza war.

This year unusually Easter falls on the same weekend for all of the town’s main Christian communities — Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican — and residents have attempted to busy themselves with holiday traditions like making date cakes or getting ready for the scout parade.

But their minds have been elsewhere.

Dozens of families from nearby Jenin have found refuge in Zababdeh from the continual Israeli military operations that have devastated the city and its adjacent refugee camp this year.

“The other day, the (Israeli) army entered Jenin, people were panicking, families were running to pick up their children,” said Zababdeh resident Janet Ghanam.

“There is a constant fear, you go to bed with it, you wake up with it,” the 57-year-old Anglican added, before rushing off to one of the last Lenten prayers before Easter.

Ghanam said her son had told her he would not be able to visit her for Easter this year, for fear of being stuck at the Israeli military roadblocks that have mushroomed across the territory.

Zababdeh looks idyllic, nestled in the hills of the northern West Bank, but the roar of Israeli air force jets sometimes drowns out the sound of its church bells.

“It led to a lot of people to think: ‘Okay, am I going to stay in my home for the next five years?’” said Saleem Kasabreh, an Anglican deacon in the town.

“Would my home be taken away? Would they bomb my home?“

Kasabreh said this “existential threat” was compounded by constant “depression” at the news from Gaza, where the death toll from the Israel’s response to Hamas’s October 2023 attack now tops 51,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Zababdeh has been spared the devastation wreaked on Gaza, but the mayor’s office says nearly 450 townspeople lost their jobs in Israel when Palestinian work permits were rescinded after the Hamas attack.

“Israel had never completely closed us in the West Bank before this war,” said 73-year-old farmer Ibrahim Daoud. “Nobody knows what will happen.”

Many say they are stalked by the spectre of exile, with departures abroad fueling fears that Christians may disappear from the Holy Land.

“People can’t stay without work and life isn’t easy,” said 60-year-old math teacher Tareq Ibrahim.

Mayor Ghassan Daibes echoed his point.

“For a Christian community to survive, there must be stability, security and decent living conditions. It’s a reality, not a call for emigration,” he said.

“But I’m speaking from lived experience: Christians used to make up 30 percent of the population in Palestine; today, they are less than one percent.

“And this number keeps decreasing. In my own family, I have three brothers abroad — one in Germany, the other two in the United States.”

Catholic priest Elias Tabban adopted a more stoical attitude, insisting his congregation’s spirituality had never been so vibrant.

“Whenever the Church is in hard times... (that’s when) you see the faith is growing,” Tabban said.


Houthi media says US air strikes hit Sanaa

People inspect the site of a reported US airstrike in Sanaa, a day after the attack. (File/AFP)
Updated 16 April 2025
Follow

Houthi media says US air strikes hit Sanaa

  • Houthi-held areas of Yemen have endured near-daily strikes, blamed on the United States, since Washington launched an air campaign against the militia on March 15

SANAA: Houthi media said more than a dozen air strikes hit the militia-held capital Sanaa on Wednesday, blaming them on the United States.
Houthi-held areas of Yemen have endured near-daily strikes, blamed on the United States, since Washington launched an air campaign against the militia on March 15 in an attempt to end their threats to shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
“Fourteen air strikes carried out by American aggression hit the Al-Hafa area in the Al-Sabeen district in the capital,” the Houthis’ Al-Masirah TV reported.
It also reported strikes blamed on the United States in the Hazm area of Jawf province.
The US campaign followed Houthi threats to resume their attacks on international shipping over Israel’s aid blockade on the Gaza Strip.
Since March 15, the Houthis have also resumed attacks targeting US military ships and Israel, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The Houthis began targeting ships transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, as well as Israeli territory, after the Gaza war began in October 2023, later pausing their attacks during a recent two-month ceasefire.
Israel cut off all supplies to Gaza at the beginning of March and resumed its offensive in the Palestinian territory on March 18, ending the truce.
The vital Red Sea route, connecting to the Suez Canal, normally carries about 12 percent of world shipping traffic, but the Houthi attacks forced many companies to make a long detour around the tip of southern Africa.


At least 8,000 missing in war-torn Sudan in 2024: Red Cross

Updated 16 April 2025
Follow

At least 8,000 missing in war-torn Sudan in 2024: Red Cross

PORT SUDAN: At least 8,000 people were reported missing in war-ravaged Sudan in 2024, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday, adding that the figure is just “the tip of the iceberg.”
“These are just the cases we have collected directly,” Daniel O’Malley, head of the ICRC delegation in Sudan, told AFP. “We know this is just a small percentage — the tip of the iceberg — of the whole caseload of missing.”


Qatar renews $60m grant for Lebanon army salaries

Updated 16 April 2025
Follow

Qatar renews $60m grant for Lebanon army salaries

  • The provisions were to enable Lebanon’s army to “carry out its national duties of maintaining stability”
  • The Lebanese President arrived in Qatar on Tuesday

DOHA: Qatar is to renew a $60 million grant to pay the salaries of Lebanon’s army and provide 162 military vehicles, the two countries said on Wednesday following Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s first official visit to the Gulf state.
Qatar’s ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani “announced the renewal of the Qatari grant to support the salaries of the Lebanese army, amounting to USD 60 million, in addition to 162 military vehicles,” a joint statement said.
It added the provisions were to enable Lebanon’s army to “carry out its national duties of maintaining stability and controlling the borders throughout Lebanese territory.”
Aoun, who was elected in January after more than two years of caretaker government in Beirut, has been tasked with charting a course out of the country’s worst economic crisis and reconstruction after all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The Lebanese President arrived in Qatar on Tuesday accompanied by foreign minister Youssef Raggi, and departed Doha on Wednesday afternoon, the official Qatar News Agency reported.
The Gulf state in February pledged support for reconstruction in Lebanon after the recent conflict and was already a provider of financial and in-kind support to the Lebanese army.
“Both sides emphasized the national role of the Lebanese army, the importance of supporting it, and the need to implement Resolution 1701 in all its provisions,” the joint statement added, urging “de-escalation in southern Lebanon.”
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 ended a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah and formed the basis of the November truce that largely ended more than a year of fresh hostilities between Israel and the Iran-backed group.
The resolution calls for the disarmament of all non-state armed groups and said Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be the only forces in south Lebanon.
Israel was due to complete its withdrawal from Lebanon by February 18 after missing a January deadline, but it has kept troops in five places it deems “strategic.”