Philippa Kibugu-Decuir, a breast cancer survivor, has launched her book titled "Dare to Hope”, an informative comic book designed to increase awareness of a ‘serious’ and ‘complex’ issue, breast cancer.
Dare to Hope is one of the first projects under the Ulinzi Youth Series, launched on Friday May 20, at Kigali Public Library
The Ulinzi (protection) youth series is a project designed to empower and educate young people to become ambassadors of breast cancer, other cancers and other non-communicable diseases, within their communities.
Kibugu-Decuir, who survived cancer 28 years ago, believes that everyone has a story and she wants to share hers with the world, and that she wants to use the power of youth to get the message across.
"My story is about empowering and life-changing lessons learned on my journey. I understand in an extremely personal way the impact of a cancer diagnosis and the importance of early detection and effective treatment that I must share in my effort to increase awareness in my advocacy and education work” she said.
Published by Imagine We Rwanda, a local publishing house, Dare to Hope exposes to the reader, how two families in Rwanda are threatened by unknown disease, (which happened to be breast cancer) and the challenges they navigate through as they seek treatment.
In line with the book's content, the activist said that, one of the mistakes families make when cancer hits, they hide it from the children without knowing that the children are most perceptive about cancer and when it strikes, it affects the whole family.
She chose a comic book to help young people also understand and educate themselves about cancer early detection and its symptoms, but also the best way to drive her message because, she discovered that teaching young people is much easier than adults
"Children and youth have fewer filters to learning, they are by nature social beings who like to share, willing to experiment, take risks, not afraid to fail and they represent trust and hope” she said
Kibugu-Decuir added that Youth has the power to influence people in their spaces, particularly parents, to adopt change in attitude about life.
She gives an example of two of her beneficiaries who believe they are alive today because their sons, after learning the importance of early detection at school, convinced them to go for medical checkup.
"Youth education and empowerment about cancer is likely to result in increased knowledge of cancer prevention and could potentially increase awareness and reduce late stage presentation of the disease and save lives, the goal of Dare to Hope comic book” she said.
Complex disease
Breast cancer is complex disease and it is the most common or serious cause of morbidity and mortality among women around the world.
In Rwanda, a recent report from Globocan2020, by Global Cancer Observatory (GCO) under the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) showed that breast cancer had so many new cases; 1237, and was followed by cervix uteri cancer which had 1229 new cases.
According to Dr. Francois Uwinkindi, Division Manager of Non-Communicable Diseases Division at Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC), this is a very practical tool to help them raise awareness in communities, especially for young people to grow with right information and become breast cancer ambassadors in their families because once detected at early stage, it can be treated and be cured.
"The set-up of the book motivates and encourages people to read the informative story, which covers all information needed about breast cancer and we hope this to make a difference in early detection,” he said.
Uwinkindi who represented RBC – the sponsors of the book – pledged that the institution will help the author to disseminate copies to different schools, so that teachers can help share the content with their students.
Jovia Mutesi, a participant from Gashora Girls Academy, said, this is a great platform to make a big impact on breast cancer early detection amongst youth. She called for more activists to participate in such activities structure
"The Dare to Hope structure leaves us with a huge task to learn and educate our elders about breast cancer disease and fight against stigma towards it” Mutesi said.
Dare to Hope is a narrative slice of life comic book that costs Rwf10,000 a copy and the author hopes to translate it from English to French and Kinyarwanda as well, for the Ulinzi youth project to gain bigger audience
The Ulinzi youth project is under Breast Cancer Initiative East Africa (BCIEA), an organization that supports breast cancer patients and survivors at their pink house in Nyarugunga, Kicukiro district. It was founded in 2008 by Kibugu-Decuir, to drive her activism effort around the world.