Staff members in CPUT’s Department of Medical Imaging and Therapeutic Sciences are planning to expand a campaign, aimed at raising awareness about cancer, to the broader campus community.
Following a recent successful campaign for World Cancer Day at two state hospitals, clinical instructor Charne Martin and lecturer Lizel Hudson are hoping to get a wider audience at CPUT involved for the next event, which they plan to host at the institution.
Hudson said the idea was to incorporate the institution’s new Virtual Environment for Radiotherapy Training (VERT) system into the event and include more partners in the Faculty of Health and Wellness Sciences.
The machine’s software mimics real life scenarios and patient profiles allowing students to learn by trial and error without endangering a patient.
“If we host the event on campus we would be able to show the students the machine and create a different audience, involving a broader student community, especially those in Health Sciences.”
For World Cancer Day earlier this year, staff and students raised awareness at four hospitals.
“The idea was to get balloons of different colours and raise awareness of the different kinds of cancers. We played games with the patients where they had to choose a colour balloon and they then had to try and guess the cancer related to it. Everyone is always very familiar with the pink for breast cancer and the gold for childhood cancer but they don’t know about all the other cancers that you can have. It was very enlightening, even for the students. They learnt with the patients,” said Martin.
A breast cancer awareness drive will also be held in October.
Ilse Fredericks
