What to do when a collaborator has breast cancer?

Upon receiving a diagnosis of breast cancer, fear, uncertainty and sadness invade women, especially when they have children or are heads of family because they live in fear of losing their economic livelihood, which increases anguish and instability. Hence the importance of the company becoming ally.

According to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi), breast cancer in 2021 was the leading cause of death due to neoplasia in women between 30 and over 60 years of age, the states with the highest incidence being Mexico City, Sonora, Chihuahua, Morelos, Veracruz Colima. The problem with the high number of deaths (from 9.7 to 7.8 per 10,000 inhabitants) is that the disease is detected in late stages.

“Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death in women, as is cervical cancer, and the company plays a key role; help in the prevention and care of the disease. There are many Actions that can be taken to avoid risk factors, many related to work”, explained Jorge Gutiérrez Siles, occupational health consultant.

He explained that in the generation of the disease there are factors related to working conditions such as sedentary lifestyle; spending long hours sitting or standing, obesity, stress, long working hours and night shifts.

When working night shifts, the circadian rhythm is altered, which affects the entire body, decompensates and increases other pathologies such as sleep problems, weight gain or addictions, which together can lead to cancer or other diseases. For this reason, it is important to know how to manage working hours, have new policies and a healthy organizational culture.

“Cancer is multifactorial, there is not a single element that triggers it. We all need to act from where we have to and be able to influence in changing the metric of cancer because the one we have of death, we would not have it if we acted in another way”, said Eliza Puente, director of the CIMA Foundation.

business awareness

Puente indicated that breast cancer claims the lives of 21 women a day, especially since 70% of cases are detected in late stagewhen there is metastasis or it is terminal stage.

He added that many of the women who are detected are of productive age, a large part are heads of households and do not find the support at their workplaces, in society and the particular medical system, so it is important to work together to reverse it. Unfortunately, many women leave their jobs due to constant absences or lack of support from their employers, which increases their level of stress.

At the company level, it must begin with empathy and awareness that female employees are people who, like everyone else, can get sick, so they must have facilities to prevent and treat themselves in a timely manner, as well as to understand that if they live with cancer, they will not always be up to date. 100. For example, in metastatic cancer, there are phases that disable women, preventing them from working properly, which the organization must assess without considering the option of rotation.

One of the initiatives that Puente seeks to promote is to have one day off a year with pay so that women go to have their prevention studies done and have flexible policies to follow up in case of detection. The same with men, because in 2019, 58 men died from this disease, indicates the Inegi.

“It is a question of whether we want to do it and the means that facilitate it and make the process less cumbersome are made available. We also need the issue to be prioritized on the people’s side, because we do have time but we dedicate it to other things”.

Measures

For Raquel Garduño, director of e-commerce and marketing at Cloe, the priority of companies must be the personalTherefore, preventive measures must be created.

Among the measures that are already applied in the organization, is conducting periodic studies of the collaborators, where a truck goes to the facilities to do mammograms and other tests for diabetes, hypertension, among others. By carrying out this dynamic, they have detected five cases in an early stage, who were given flexibility in every way to cope with their illness.

Another of the measures that companies must have is a basic medical service to attend to all kinds of health problems. The most important thing is to listen to the feelings of the people and bring all possible means to prevent and treat the different ailments, he stressed.

In this regard, Gutiérrez proposes carrying out periodic analysis, having employees in health programs, working on campaigns to reduce obesity, stress and addictions, work properly in NOM 035 that it is not only filling out questionnaires, having good leadership practices and monitoring more those who do heavier work, work at night or who are at greater risk of suffering from some factor of the disease.

He explained that in Mexico much emphasis has been given to Work accidents, but not to diseases when there are around 500,000 work risks, of which 74,000 are from Covid-19, leaving 427,000 and 12,000 diseases. Worldwide, diseases represent 60% of the total number of work accidents, in Mexico approximately 250,000 diseases generate them, but more emphasis is given to accidents.

“What we must do is change the culture to prevent, not only so that they do not have accidents, but also so that they do not get sick and when they leave the company, they do not leave with a chronic degenerative disease such as diabetes or hypertension, which in turn they can play against, by generating cancer. With an adaptation of norms we are going to avoid this, ”she concluded.