Thursday, August 26, 2010

Not Good News for Women

I'm going to copy verbatim an alert sent out by Susan G. Komen for the Cure. News like this is why I blog, to energize the fight to keep film production here so that people can find a job. When the choice is between buying groceries for the week for the family or having a mammogram, the answer is preordained. With a job, and maybe even some health insurance, maybe there will be an opportunity for mom to take better care of herself. In the meantime, women in California are between the rock and the hard reality of having a difficult time finding a place to receive a diagnosis if they have no insurance and no money. Over 4,000 will die in California this year. You may have passed one of them on the street. I hope you smiled, because that's about all that any of us have the ability to give these days: a smile and a hug. What are we going to do?

This year, more than 21,000 women in California will be diagnosed with breast cancer. And it is expected that we will lose 4,200 women to the disease this year.

The Every Woman Counts (EWC) program, which provides early detection breast and cervical cancer screening to disadvantaged women in our state, is facing drastic budget cuts. Everyone understands the budget is tight, but this program has suffered more than its fair share, putting at risk thousands of California residents.

On January 1, the California Department of Health arbitrarily shut the program's doors for the remainder of the fiscal year, and closed access to the program to new women over age 50 and for all women age 40 to 49. That last cut was particularly troubling because almost half of the women screened by the program are in their 40s. Then, when the new fiscal year dawned without a state budget on July 1, the Department of Health closed the program indefinitely.


Sharon

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