“I’m like a social worker and I try to use my experience to help other cancer patients to believe that they will survive. They need to know that a cancer diagnosis is not the end.”
A passionate advocate for greater awareness, Ana Mazanishvili runs the Pink Space Centre in Tbilisi, Georgia – a charity offering free advice and support for breast cancer patients. She recently contributed to the launch of a new WHO initiative to guide countries on how to reduce breast cancer mortality by improving early breast cancer detection and access to quality and effective breast cancer care.
Ana explains that treatment options in Georgia at the time she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012 were expensive and cancer patients weren’t offered any psychosocial support. While waiting at a clinic for treatment one day, she met another woman who was in tears, having just received a cancer diagnosis. She realized it was within her power to help.
