"I had a mammogram... twenty years ago!" To raise awareness of breast cancer, which affects one in eight women, a bus is coming to meet them in Strasbourg, hoping to remove taboos and apprehensions.
With more than 61,000 new cases each year in France, breast cancer remains the most common among women. It is also the deadliest, with around 12,000 deaths per year.
But detecting it early makes it easier to treat it. This is the message of the day from "Spot Sante", a traveling bus launched in September by the city of Strasbourg to improve access to health.
On this day of walking, he stopped near the Museum of Modern Art, not far from a priority district of the city's policy.
A passerby with gray hair streaked with pink admits that her last mammogram was more than two decades ago.
If the “Health Spot” does not offer on-site screening, it provides advice and guidance.
Next to it, a "breast bus" set up by the National Federation of Radiologists presents a mammography machine and explains how an examination is carried out.
– Multiple reasons –
"What holds people back is fear," says Philippe Host, a radiologist. The patients he sees in his office are "always a little stressed." But "A mammogram lasts three or four minutes," he reminds us.
"The device itself is scary, the word cancer is scary..." says Anne Holzmann, 50, a member of the "Patients en reseau" support association. She herself was struck by breast cancer two years ago and encourages passers-by to get screened because "the sooner it is treated, the greater the chance of remission and recovery."
When detected early, breast cancer is curable in nine out of ten cases.
Women between the ages of 50 and 74 benefit from free screening every two years. But one in two women in this age group do not have a mammogram.
Fear of being in pain, of hearing bad news, difficulty in getting an appointment... there are many reasons.
"Just now I saw a lady in her fifties, she said, 'ah yes, I received the letter, but I'm not going to do the screening, I always tore it up or threw it away'," laments Alpha Bah, 44, head of the NGO Ylla. Named after his wife who died of breast cancer in 2017, the association aims to raise awareness among the population, particularly from minorities.
– “Questions without taboos” –
"Most often, in Afro communities, talking about the body is a bit taboo, and people die of this disease in secret," says Mr. Bah. Speaking of his personal story, he hopes that women "wake up and go get screened."
This type of prevention action "is a first step in a health journey that allows you to get informed, to ask questions without taboos, without an appointment, and it's free," Strasbourg's Green mayor Jeanne Barseghian emphasized to AFP.
In addition to breast cancer, the "Health Spot" addresses mental health, diabetes and smoking as it travels from one neighborhood to another.
"Medical desertification does not only concern rural areas, but also, increasingly, urban areas. So, it is important that health goes to meet the population, rather than it being up to the inhabitants to make the effort to find information, to find a health professional," emphasizes the mayor.
Coming back from the market with her children, Jamila, 39, sees an interest in it: "We don't necessarily want to talk about it with our doctor, we are a little embarrassed, whereas with strangers it is easier."
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