For the fifth year in a row, Astellas Bulgaria celebrates the World Month for Prevention of Men’s Health – November, with an information campaign “Together against prostate cancer”. In 2021, the initiative took place under the motto “Man on the spot”. Its aim is to raise public awareness about prostate cancer and the possibilities for diagnosis and modern treatment, as well as to draw public attention to the problems of patients suffering from this disease.
As part of the campaign, a video was made to provoke men to pay attention to their health and not to miss the regular preventive examinations. The emphasis is on the strength and responsibility of men – to continue to care for their loved ones, to perform their duties, to be a support for wives and pillars of their children, to “weigh in their place.” The campaign seeks to reinforce the feeling that for every man to take care of his loved ones, he must first take care of his health.
Throughout November, the video was broadcasted on 130 television screens in 13 hospitals in Sofia, Plovdiv, Stara Zagora, Burgas, Varna, Pleven, Veliko Tarnovo, Yambol and Vidin, as well as on the screens of metro stations in Sofia.
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer and the fifth leading cause of death from cancer among men in 2020. Last year, more than 1.4 million new cases were registered worldwide, and more than 375 thousand people died. In Bulgaria every year about 2500 men are diagnosed with the disease.
As with many cancers, this type of cancer has no characteristic symptoms to make an accurate diagnosis. Very often the disease is detected during preventive examinations. Risk factors for its development are age, family burden, environmental factors, as well as smoking and alcohol consumption in large quantities.
It has been found that men who have first-degree relatives (brother or father) with prostate cancer are twice as likely to develop the disease. In addition, the incidence of prostate cancer escalates dramatically with age. Therefore, men over 50, once a year should have a preventive examination with a marker in the blood and, if necessary, visit a urologist.
