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Wednesday 28 October 2015

Airtel holds Pink October, joins world to promote cancer awareness

As part of efforts to continuously build a healthy workforce and encourage employees to achieve work-life balance, leading telecommunications services provider, Airtel Nigeria, has organised a breast cancer awareness seminar tagged Pink October under its Employee Knowledge Series for October.

The highly informative and interactive Knowledge Series is in line with the Breast Cancer Awareness Month, marked in countries across the world every October to increase attention and support for the awareness, early detection and treatment as well as palliative care of the disease.

The seminar held at the Banana Island Headquarters of the telco was facilitated by healthcare and lifestyle experts who discussed several issues including breast cancer detection and prevention, nutrition, physical fitness among others.

Speaking at the event, Human Resources Director, Airtel Nigeria, Gbemiga Owolabi noted that the telco as a responsible organisation puts great emphasis to the wellbeing of its employees in order to help them succeed both in their career and personal lives.

“The importance of health and wellbeing cannot be over-emphasised. That is why the organisation provides opportunities to inform and enlighten employees through the Employee Knowledge Series.

“As the month of October is known worldwide as a period for raising awareness about cancer, we find it very timely to organise this seminar to empower staff with information they need to know about the diseases, early detection, prevention and treatment. We know definitely that the programme will benefit everyone and also help the organisation build a healthy workforce.”


Also speaking at the occasion, Dr. Femi Olaleye, Managing Director of Optimal Cancer Care Foundation, enlightened the audience on cancer, measures to take in order to prevent, detect and treat the disease.

According to Dr. Olaleye, cancer is caused by cells in the body that are supposed to die after sometime, but somehow failed to die and so they continue to grow abnormally in the body.

“Breast cancer remains the number one disease claiming the lives of women in Nigeria and Africa at large. Early detection can help reduce the risks it poses.  Women can either examine themselves or consult an expert to check for signs of breast cancer, because if cancer is discovered early, perhaps when the cancer is like the size of peanut, treatment becomes easy, but if it becomes bigger it is more challenging.”

Speaking further, Dr. Olaleye noted that carcinogenic elements found in cosmetics and other consumer goods increase the risk of developing cancer. He therefore advised that people should avoid products containing cancer-causing substance like formaldehyde which is found in fake eyelashes adhesives, nails products, hair dye and shampoos.

Two nutrition experts, Dr. Patrick Ijewere and his wife, Sherese Ijewere, highlighted the importance of removing toxic materials from the body from time to time and having proper nutrition in order to prevent cancer. They noted that one of the effective ways to avoid developing cancer is to maintain healthy lifestyle and healthy meals.

Also at the seminar was Nollywood star and fitness instructor, Kate Henshaw who encouraged employees to maintain regular routine of fitness exercise in order to remain healthy and fit. She said apart from keeping fit through exercise, the human body releases toxic wastes through sweating thereby keeping the body system healthy to fight cancer.

Employees also had the opportunity to ask questions after the presentations by the speakers. Some staff later joined Kate Henshaw in a fitness workout that lasted about one hour.

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