Challenge rises to Pakistan’s breast cancer taboos

Your Health Matters

In this Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013 photo, Pakistani women listen to a lecture organized by the breast cancer awareness group PinkRibbon in Islamabad, Pakistan. One in nine women in Pakistan will face breast cancer during their life, with the country itself having the highest rate of the disease across Asia, according to the breast cancer awareness group PinkRibbon, oncologists and other aid groups. Yet discussing it remains taboo in a conservative, Islamic culture where the word breast is associated with sexuality instead of health and many view it as immoral for women to go to the hospital for screenings or discuss it even within their family. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash)ISLAMABAD (AP) — In Pakistan, a country where breast cancer kills more women than terrorist attacks, an awareness group couldn't even say the word "breast" while talking at a university about mammograms and how to check for lumps.

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