Beyond the Pink Ribbon: Turning Breast Cancer Awareness into Access and Action

Every October, breast cancer awareness is symbolized by pink ribbons, fundraising events, and heightened public attention. Yet behind these symbols lies a far more complex reality: for millions of women across Asia and beyond, breast cancer is not simply a matter of awareness, but a daily struggle due to multiple factors such as late diagnosis, prohibitive treatment costs, and fragmented systems of care.

In 2025, breast cancer is projected to claim over 680,000 lives worldwide – half of which could be prevented through earlier detection and timely access to treatment.

As we reflect on Breast Cancer Awareness Day 2025, the challenge extends well beyond awareness. The real imperative is to ensure that patients are diagnosed early, treated affordably, and supported consistently throughout their cancer journey.

Why Early Diagnosis Still Fails in Many Markets

Challenge 1: Early Diagnosis & Timing

Despite decades of awareness campaigns, late-stage presentation remains the norm in much of Southeast Asia, carrying significant implications for both cost and survival. A regional review of 15 Southeast Asian and Western Pacific countries found that only eight had even partial organized breast cancer screening programs. In practice, most women are still reached only through opportunistic, hospital-based services rather than systematic, nationwide efforts.

This gap is evident across markets. In Malaysia, mammography uptake has persistently remained in the low double digits despite its recommendation as the gold-standard modality. In Singapore – where infrastructure is comparatively advanced – routine participation in mammography screening still falls below 40%. In Thailand, diagnostic capacity constraints are even more pronounced, with clinical breast examination (CBE) still widely used as the primary screening tool, particularly in rural provinces.

Several systemic factors continue to drive these outcomes, some of which are:

Limited screening coverage: Diagnostic technologies remain concentrated in urban centers, leaving rural populations underserved
Cultural and social barriers: Fear, stigma, and misconceptions delay women from seeking testing even when services are available
Health system bottlenecks: Long waiting times and inefficient referral pathways cause further progression before treatment begins

The consequence is stark: in Southeast Asia, late diagnosis compresses survival time from multiple years down to mere months and drives up costs dramatically. What is urgently needed is not simply more education, but structured pathways that ensure awareness efforts translate into early-stage detection, fast referral, and timely treatment.

Challenge 2: Access & Affordability

Even with the benefit of early diagnosis, financial access remains a critical barrier – the ability to pay for timely treatment often determines outcomes as much as the biology of the disease itself.

In Malaysia, although public subsidies exist, women still face an average out-of-pocket burden equivalent to nearly 10% of annual household income for breast cancer treatment every year – a sum that represents a significant burden for many families. As the disease progresses, this burden rises steeply: a single cycle of breast cancer chemotherapy in private hospitals can consume almost an entire month’s income, while comprehensive treatment over the course of a year may absorb 80–500% of a household’s annual earnings. The result is that many patients delay or forgo treatment altogether, reinforcing the vicious cycle of late presentation and poor survival.

Our Solution: Patient Access Programs (PAPs)

To bridge these systemic gaps, DKSH Patient Solutions designs Patient Access Programs (PAPs), ensuring that awareness, diagnosis, and treatment access are connected seamlessly.

These programs are built around three key pillars:

Financial Support: Providing different financial support models that reduce upfront cost barriers and distributes expenses evenly across treatment cycles
Educational Empowerment: Integrating tailored patient education across every stage of the treatment journey, strengthening adherence and ultimately contributing to better treatment outcomes
Data-Driven Design: PAPs generate valuable real-world evidence on adherence, discontinuation, and patient trends. We leverage this data to refine our program design, enhance sustainability, and demonstrate measurable impact

These principles come to life in our on-the-ground programs, highlighted by the following case studies:

Case Study One: Taiwan – From Diagnostics to Access

In Taiwan, our team has designed an integrated program that connects genetic diagnostics directly with patient access pathways. By partnering with specialized diagnostic centers and healthcare providers, we’ve built a system that enables physicians across the country to easily initiate testing for genetic markers associated with high-risk conditions.

Once test results are available, they’re delivered straight to the treating physicians, empowering them to make informed, personalized treatment decisions. Patients who test positive for specific mutations are seamlessly connected to access programs that help ensure timely and affordable therapy.

The framework also extends to individuals who carry genetic risks but have not yet developed symptoms, supporting early detection and proactive management. By uniting diagnostics and access under one coordinated approach, our model accelerates time to treatment, reduces barriers, and helps translate genetic insights into real-world patient impact.

Case Study Two: Malaysia – From Access to Engagement

Since 2021, our team in Malaysia has been supporting patients through a breast cancer program in partnership with a leading pharmaceutical company. Recognizing that breast cancer care often requires prolonged treatment cycles, significant financial commitment, and sustained patient engagement, the program has evolved through several phases to systematically address these challenges:

Phase 1: Enabling Access – We launched Patient Access Programs using “Buy X Get Y” (BXGY) models to reduce the high costs of breast cancer therapy. This allowed more patients to continue treatment.

Phase 2: Early Intervention to support patients to continue treatment – Through our continuous assessment of patient trends, we collected valuable real-world evidence including patient adherence patterns and dropout rates, which revealed key trends of discontinuation. Acting on these insights, our team increased points of engagements at high dropout points to address challenges in patients’ treatment journey.

Phase 3: Driving Engagement – To sustain breast cancer patients through their demanding treatment journey, we expanded beyond affordability into structured, multi-channel engagement. Based on insights from Phase 2, we recognized that many patients required not only financial support but also continuous encouragement and education. In response, we introduced a tailored Patient Engagement Program leveraging direct outreach and digital integration via WhatsApp – the most widely used communication platform in Malaysia. Through this program, patients now receive milestone-based content, lifestyle management, and adherence encouragement delivered through their preferred channel of communication.

The Road Ahead

At DKSH Patient Solutions, we do not see Patient Access Programs as isolated affordability schemes. Instead, we embed them into a continuum of care – from diagnostics, to affordability, to engagement – ensuring that patients are supported across every stage of their journey. Our ability to combine local execution (tailored to country-specific health systems and cultural realities) with regional scale (leveraging our pan-Asian footprint) positions us uniquely as a trusted partner to both pharmaceutical companies and healthcare systems.

Looking forward, the challenge is not just to expand programs, but to continuously refine them with real-world evidence, digital integration, and patient-centered design. By doing so, we aim to transform awareness into action, and action into measurable improvements in survival, equity, and expected outcomes.

Breast Cancer Awareness Day 2025 reminds us that the true measure of progress is not only the visibility of ribbons, but the invisibility of barriers. Our mission is to help make that future possible.

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