Rotary Palm Ville and Sakra Hospital launch ‘The Pink Express’

Rotary Bangalore Palmville has launched The Pink Express, a mobile breast cancer screening centre equipped with breast cancer screening equipment. With its mission being ‘Early Detection. Save Lives’, this initiative has been supported by Sakra World Hospital.

The Pink Express will be used for conducting awareness and screening camps for the underprivileged free of cost. While the Rotary is funding all the medical equipment for the Pink Express, Sakra Hospital is providing the doctors and medical technicians to conduct these camps.

Speaking at the occasion, Ritesh Goel, President, Rotary Palmville, said, “Rotary is involved with many community service-based projects involving healthcare, education, environment and vocational areas. We are happy to launch this initiative as a part of Rotary International’s global focus on healthcare. The technology being used in The Pink Express for screening is based on thermal imaging. This is a “No Touch No Pain” process encouraging more women to undergo this test and hence create a bigger social impact.”

Takashi Maki, MD, Sakra World Hospital, said, “This initiative is in line with our philosophy of community services. We are pleased to partner with Rotary who are committed to projects for a social cause. Breast cancer is the biggest killer among women in India today. While in western countries the survival rates in breast cancer over the years has become progressively very high, sadly, in India, it is still woefully low. This is primarily due to lack of awareness and periodic screening as a result of which majority of the cases get detected in stage three or stage four. This initiative is thus focussed on awareness building and early detection leading to higher survival rates.”

Informing more about The Pink Express, Soumitro Ghosh, Programme Director, Rotary Palmville, added, “The Pink Express will travel to parts of Rural Bangalore, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to organise the camps. It is equipped with the thermal imaging equipment and an ultrasonogram. The unique thing about the screening is the use of a new technology which is based on thermal imaging where heat maps of the breast are captured and subsequently interpreted by the system automatically aided by AI-based machine learning software. The solution- thermalytix is from Niramai, a Bengaluru-based company. Besides other benefits like a pain-free process and no radiation hazards, this technology can detect abnormalities even below the age group of 40 years which is relevant, as India has a growing incidence rate of breast cancer in the younger population.”