KUWAIT CITY, Jan 28, (KUNA): The Cancer Awareness National Campaign (CAN) announced that it trained 2,983 doctors, mostly primary care physicians and dentists, on early detection of head, neck and thyroid cancers. CAN board chairman Dr. Khaled Al-Saleh said in his final speech on Sunday, during the annual thyroid awareness campaign, that they would be training doctors all year round to be able to detect first signs, for a faster diagnosis and treatment.

Dr. Al-Saleh talked about the importance of training the nursing staff on dealing with cancer patients and their families, 2,585 of them were trained to raise community awareness, and how to identify risk factors and signs. Cooperation with the Ministry of Health aims to help with the readiness of medical and nursing staff, said Dr. Al-Saleh, while campaigns aim to help the target audience on recognizing the signs of thyroid cancer.

A person can get thyroid cancer at any age, but women are at most risk between the ages 40-50, while men are at most risk between 60-70 years, it is three times more common in women than in men. Campaign officer Dr. Eman Al- Shemmari, reiterated Dr. Al-Saleh’s words by saying how important it was to raise awareness and to provide an integrated service to combat thyroid cancer from detection to treatment. She also talked about the necessity for someone with a family history with cancer to do regular tests at home, seeing as how thyroid cancer symptoms are easy to detect by appearing on the skin, hair and nails, thyroid cancer is one of the curable cancers and causes few deaths if diagnosed early, it is the most common but least dangerous cancer.