Roughly one in eight women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime, and the mortality rate is about 15 percent, according to the American Cancer Society. But in Bangladesh, 90 percent of the estimated 30,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer die from it, according to the International Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Ohio State professor and doctor Richard Love is looking to help change that.

Love has 20 years of experience as a breast cancer researcher in Asia. For the past three years, he has worked with a Bangladeshi non-governmental organization, Amader Gram, to develop the Amader Gram Breast Care Program. His work with Amader Gram, which means “our village” in Bangla, has provided him access to one of the most health-challenged areas in the world, he said.

Love will give a presentation on the breast cancer research he worked on in Bangladesh at 8 a.m. Tuesday in 234 Meiling Hall.

His research in Bangladesh began as a clinical trial for breast cancer, but he said he and his team at Amader Gram first had to confront the complexity of the breast cancer problem for Bangladeshi women.

“The more you get into things with your eyes open, you begin to get some data and you get a better picture of what’s going on,” he said.

The biggest hurdle facing Bangladeshi women isn’t awareness, Love said, but “complex cultural-human rights issues.”

Love added that in too many cases, women do not have a choice when it comes to medical attention. Instead of receiving early detection screenings, as they do in wealthier nations, many Bangladeshi women are unable to do anything about it because of poverty, cultural expectations and other barriers.

The needs of their children and husbands traditionally come first, he said.

“How do we give women a choice?” he asked. “How do we create cultural circumstances that allow them to take care of their own health?”

This is one of numerous problems facing Love and the Amader Gram Breast Care Program as they work to improve the health of women in a country whose health system is “underfinanced, undermanned and dysfunctional. By most global indicators, the country and its people are forgotten,” he said.

Love highlighted findings from some of Amader Gram’s clinical trials, in which 245 women had obvious or suspected breast cancer.
Eighty-two of the 245, or 33 percent, received treatment of some kind, while the remaining 67 percent received no treatment or further evaluations.

Despite staggering statistics, Love said he is optimistic, especially because the work of Amader Gram has created some dialogue in Bangladesh about the human rights issues concerning women and their health. As a result, Love’s presentation will begin with a 15-minute documentary film, “A Choice: The Amader Gram Breast Care Program” by Bangladeshi filmmaker Syed Borhan Kabir.

Love said Kabir’s film is important because it is “a Bangladeshi statement of how he [Kabir] sees the problem,” and not a Western one.

Love said he feels strongly that Bangladeshis will ultimately have to solve their own problems, and he sees that possibility through “increased participation in society.”

After the film, Love will discuss how the Amader Gram program is addressing the human rights issues highlighted in the film. The presentation is open to the public and is scheduled to last one hour.