The Tribune

LOCAL medical professionals will take part in a webinar this weekend alongside a senior official from Florida’s Cleveland Clinic.

Two leading local medical experts, including one who survived breast cancer to become an international marathon runner and author, will team up on Saturday with the director of the Cleveland Clinic Florida Maroone Cancer Centre for the free webinar, starting at 11am.

The webinar is being offered on the closing day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month as the latest figures show increasing education about early detection is reaping unprecedented rewards. Some 99 percent of women diagnosed with localised breast cancer are now surviving five years or more after diagnosis and 86 percent surviving a more widespread type of the disease referred to as regional breast cancer. Breast cancer rates, especially at later stage in young women, are extraordinarily high in The Bahamas, which has been a target for research by Cleveland Clinic and others.

“We are very excited to share with The Bahamas the latest research we have on diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer and to partner, once again, with the local medical community,” said Dr Zeina Nahleh, chair of the Department of Hematology-Oncology and director of the Cleveland Clinic Florida Maroone Cancer Centre.

“Treatment continues to evolve and, as it does, it becomes easier on patient tolerance, an important factor that we consider when working with local physicians to help determine the best course going forward once we have a diagnosis.”

Along with Dr Nahleh, who will discuss managing breast cancer care in a COVID-19 environment, Dr Susan Williams-Lockhart will address the connection between breast health and wellness so women can be empowered to be aggressive warriors of their health and not just victims.

Dr Lockhart is an acute care specialist and one of only a handful in The Bahamas who earned the title Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons.

The third participant, Palmdale Vision Centre owner Dr Ebbie Jackson, is an optometrist who got an all-too-close look at breast cancer and stared it down. An avid runner whose mother had passed away from breast cancer more than 20 years earlier, Dr Jackson was preparing for her first international meet, the New York Marathon in 2011, when she, too, was diagnosed. She was sidelined for months with surgery and chemotherapy, but went on to run in the marathon and complete the 26-mile course, a victory she went on to detail in a memoir, A Marathon Runner’s Triumph over Cancer: The Ebbie Jackson Story, hoping to inspire others.

The webinar is a continuation of a lecture series, with the first in the series, in November 2019, drawing a standing room only crowd at Baha Mar.

To register for the webinar, go to Events.DPA-Media.Com. Participants will be able to submit questions ahead of the event or in a chat room which will be monitored during the webinar.