Finola Chatamra
Abstract
To honour Her Majesty the Queen’s special birthday, the editorial board asked if an article could be written about the work of the Queen Sirikit Centre for Breast Cancer, based at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, Thai Red Cross Society. The centre was built up from the ambitious idea of creating a centre of excellence for the treatment of all women, but primarily the underprivileged. The main barrier to the project’s fruition was the lack of initial funding. The article charts the story of the centre’s humble beginnings to its present status, as an international ‘centre of excellence’, in clinical care and research. It also examines the outreach work to educate Thai women about breast cancer at a national level, and its pioneering annual breast cancer awareness campaign. The piece also discusses the centre’s breast and cervical cancer screening programme in the slums of greater Bangkok.
Keywords: goals of QSCBC, outreach projects