(Alola Media/Baucau) As part of the Pink October celebration, HALIKU held a socialization about breast cancer to the Baucau community. The activity that was on October 16, 2024 took place in the Hall of the Church of Santo Antonio Vila Antiga – Baucau.

October is a special month dedicated by the world for awareness about breast cancer activities. As one of the problems faced by all countries, breast cancer and other cancer have affected to people’s lives, regardless of sex, age, education level including social status. Globally, at least 8.2 million people lost their lives due to cancer where 4 million lives of them died at age 30 to 69 years.

In the initial session of the socialization, the Alola Foundation through its Executive Director, Ms. Maria Guterres expressed his gratitude to the Parish Saint Antonio Vila Antiga-Baucau, Father Manuel Ximenes, for collaboration gathering the community, especially Catholics in Baucau including breast cancer survivors in celebrating October Pink.

“It is also important to disseminate this information to the whole community so that they can find out the signs of breast cancer and what factors cause it,” said Executive Director of the Alola Maria Guterres Foundation at the opening.

She also explained that breast cancer can be treated by early detection so that when people know the signs of the disease in their bodies, they can immediately check themselves to the nearest health facility or hospital.

Early detection is not only important, but is also the key to saving lives from cancer. Therefore, it is important for the whole community to maintain a healthy lifestyle in everyday life.

In October 2025, various activities were held by the Alola Foundation through the HALIKU Sub-Program (I chose to Curve) in the Pink October Celebration in collaboration with the National Commission on Timor Leste Breast Cancer (KNKSTL) and the Dili Health Center (DMC-Ingles) with the central theme “Let’s We Prevent Breast Cancer”.

A number of other socialization activities were also carried out for the growth of public awareness regarding early detection of breast cancer such as socialization to the FMA Timor-Leste Sister Community (2/10), socialization to ANZ Bank Staff (18/10) as well as socialization to the public communities in 4 administrative posts, Baucau (15/10), Liquica Villa (Liquica), Cailaco (Bobonaro) and Hato-udo (Ainaro). During the celebration, the community was also given the opportunity to get access to breast cancer screening facilitated by the DMC-Dili team.

With all the activities that have been carried out, the joint team (HALIKU-Alola, KNKSTL and DMC) hopes that there will be an increase in public awareness about the dangers of breast cancer and hope that the participating people can practice early detection and share the information they receive.