Breast Cancer Awareness Amongst South Asian Women in UK

Running head: BREAST CANCER AWARENESS AMONGST SOUTH ASIAN WOMAN
BREAST CANCER AWARENESS AMONGST SOUTH ASIAN WOMEN IN UK
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

1BREAST CANCER AWARENESS AMONGST SOUTH ASIAN WOMAN
Executive summary:
Breast cancer has been reported to be the most prevalent cancer types in the United Kingdom
with the prevalence rate being the highest among South Asian women. Lack of education and
awareness about breast cancer has served to be a major obstacle that hinders access to care
facilities among the South Asian Women. This report contains five chapters. The first four
chapters cover Characteristics of the geographical community, Health improvement issue,
Service provision and the role of the nurses. The final and fifth chapter is for summary and
conclusion. The This report details the strategies undertaken to impart awareness among the
South Asian women in one popular school and community college across six major cities of
UK that include, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Bristol and Nottingham. The
awareness strategies typically comprise of imparting education about the nature of cancer,
paying attention to the initial signs and symptoms and opting for mandatory screening so as
to ensure initial identification of breast cancer.

2BREAST CANCER AWARENESS AMONGST SOUTH ASIAN WOMAN
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Chapter 1 - Characteristics of the geographical community......................................................4
Chapter 2 – Health improvement issue......................................................................................8
Chapter 3: Service Provision....................................................................................................11
Chapter 4: The role of the Nurses............................................................................................14
References................................................................................................................................19
Appendix 1...............................................................................................................................23

3BREAST CANCER AWARENESS AMONGST SOUTH ASIAN WOMAN
Introduction
Globalisation has made many 1st world countries a multi- communal living place and United
Kingdom is no exception to this context. Nine percent of United Kingdom’s total population
is comprises of ethnic minority communities and almost half them minorities communities
are from Indian subcontinent (Wohlandet al. 2010). Community plays a major role in case of
disease awareness and prevention of any particular disease. Communities can be of two types
which are known as interest community and geographic community. In this report, disease
awareness program for a geographic community in the United Kingdom will be discussed.
Geographic community can be defined as a community which is demarcated over a common
geographic space. There might be a common social interaction or tie present amongst the
individual in that said community (Poland and Maré 2005). The geographic community that
will be discussed and analysed in this article is the women living in United Kingdom from
South Asia. Studies have suggested that most common type of cancer in United Kingdom is
breast cancer. The incidence rate of breast cancer is increasing among the South Asian
women. Many of the woman from South Asia is multilingual; however they can only read
their mother tongue(Wohlandet al. 2010). As a direct consequences, breast cancer awareness
and screening amongst them is very low and there is anurgent need for raising awareness
amongst this community. Therefore, in this article, community profile of South Asian
woman, health issues amongst them, service provision, and role of nurses in such case will be
discussed for the disease breast cancer in the following chapter.

4BREAST CANCER AWARENESS AMONGST SOUTH ASIAN WOMAN
Chapter 1 - Characteristics of the geographical community
Community profile: South Asian people are the largest ethnic minority community in
United Kingdom which comprises up to 9 per cent of the total British population. Nearly, half
of the South-Asian population belongs to the Indian sub- continent (Wohlandet al. 2010).
This large per cent is mainly due to the reason of large scale immigration from South Asia
which started in the year of 1950s and hiked in the year of 1960s and 1970s (Farooq and
Coleman 2005). As a direct consequence, few south Asian women over the age of 60 were
born in the United Kingdom (Farooq and Coleman 2005). Unsurprisingly, incidence rate of
breast cancer amongst these woman are almost same as the breast cancer incidence rate
within the Indian sub- continent. However, awareness of breast cancer is very low amongst
the women from south Asian people.
Justification for chosen disease and community: Cancer is one of leading malignant
disease in the United Kingdom. Amongst cancer, breast cancer is the most commonly
occurring disease amongst the British woman in United Kingdom. Breast cancer constitutes
almost 20 per cent of all cancer related deaths among the British woman (dos Santos Silva et
al. 2003). Unfortunately, there is still no cure for the cancer. The only process of treating
cancer is awareness, early detection and prevention. To achieve this goal, awareness is
paramount amongst the individuals within a community. It has been observed that lack of
awareness about breast cancer is very much persistent amongst the South Asian woman.
Hence, raising awareness for breast cancer amongst the South Asian woman has been chosen
as the awareness topic for this article.
Characteristics: Asian or British Asian makes the biggest ethnic community in the United
Kingdom and Wales. According to the 2011 census report, almost 7 to 8 per cent of total
United Kingdom population belongs to the people from South Asian region (Ons.gov.uk

5BREAST CANCER AWARENESS AMONGST SOUTH ASIAN WOMAN
2019). Amongst them, Indian people have the largest share, followed by Pakistanis and
Bangladeshis respectively. Indian population percentage is 2.5 per cent, followed by
Pakistanis with 2 per cent (Ons.gov.uk 2019). Bangladeshis comprises of around 0.75 per
cent of the total South Asian ethnic population (Ons.gov.uk 2019). Asian individuals from
other countries comprises of almost 1.5 per cent of the people (Ons.gov.uk 2019). 1.4 million
people culturally and ethnically belongs from India and international migration report from
2011 census data showed that the individual from south Asian countries which are India,
Pakistan and Bangladesh continuing to be growing higher (Ons.gov.uk 2019). From the 2011
census data, it can be seen that ethnic citizens from India have grown 2.5 per cent from 2 per
cent in the last decade whereas ethnic citizens from Pakistan have grown almost 0.6 per cent
in the last decade (Ons.gov.uk 2019). Table 1 below shows the per cent of Asian ethnic
population present in the various region of the United Kingdom and Wales.
Table 1: Asian ethnic population present in the various region of the United Kingdom
and Wales.
Region Asian/Asian British
England and Wales 7.5
North East 2.9
North West 6.2
Yorkshire and the
Humber
7.3
East Midlands 6.5
West Midlands 10.8
East of England 4.8
London 18.5
South East 5.2
South West 2.0
Wales 2.3
Source: (Ons.gov.uk 2019)
From the above table, it can be seen that the largest population from Asia concentrated in the
London municipal area followed by West Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber. Almost
18.5 per cent of total population lives in London and amongst them 6.6 per cent are Indian