Breast Cancer Awareness with Dr. Lizanne Langenhoven

This week on Womanity-Women in Unity Dr. Amaleya Goneos-Malka talks to Dr. Lizanne Langenhoven who is a clinical and radiation oncologist with the Panorama Centre For Surgical Oncology in Cape Town.

October is breast cancer awareness month, which serves as an annual international campaign to raise awareness about breast cancer; and 13 October is International Metastatic Breast Cancer Day. In today’s conversation we continue to raise awareness of this important issue that effects many women and their families across the continent.

From a breast cancer awareness perspective Dr. Langenhoven encourages women to take responsibility for themselves and loved ones, being our sisters’ keepers and ensuring we have regular screenings. Early detection of cancer is half the battle.

Dr. Langenhoven shares her team’s multidisciplinary approach to cancer treatment, where experts from their respective disciplines work collaboratively – seeing the same case through different eyes to derive the most suitable treatment for the patient. Cancer research is ongoing and newer treatments have become highly targeted honing into specific cancer cells to deliver therapy at a cellular level.

Medicine is still a male dominated field and this sometimes impacts on the way that female doctors are perceived by patients, the way they put in double the effort required to perform their work, and causes them to mimic male voices rather than embracing their female emotive voices of empathy, care and love. Dr. Langenhoven is actively shifting the narrative to combine male and female voices to deliver the best of both to treat patients and personnel more holistically and humanly.

We note that working women, whether professionals or shift workers, experience universal challenges of fulfilling their work commitments at the expense of their home lives, and consider there is room to change the current status quo to one that allows women to achieve greater balance in their lives, without compromising their responsibilities. Tune in for more…