For many women, a sudden pain or unusual discharge can trigger fear and uncertainty. For 35-year-old Iraqi woman S.A. (pseudonym), it was precisely this fear that brought her to a public hospital in 2023. When she felt an unusual sting in her left breast and noticed abnormal discharge, she rushed for a screening. The first question she encountered at the reception desk alarmed her: “Do you have a family history of breast cancer?”

She recalls that moment vividly. “I was terrified and started thinking hard about my relatives,” she noted. “But I answered confidently, No, we don’t have a family history.”

S.A., who preferred not to reveal her full name, remembers being taken to a small examination room where the doctor repeated the same question before discovering a lump in her breast. “The doctor looked at me with sympathy and remarked, ‘What a pity, you’re still young,’ then quickly reassured me that it might be a benign tumor,” she shared with Shafaq News.