Neha Kumar lost her mum to breast cancer just two years after her diagnosis.
"I’ll never forget that phone call, because she said to me, 'I was in the shower, this scab on my chest started to bleed.'
"She didn’t even want to say the word breast," Neha recalled.
She said her mother Renu left things too late after turning a blind eye to her symptoms.
"Especially in South Asian communities, we never talk about our bodies, especially private parts of our bodies.
"She never said she had a scab there, or talked about finding a lump. In fact, I don’t think she was ever taught to scan her breasts."
As well as the cultural stigma around breast and cervical screening, there are also barriers to do with language, accessibility and fear.
General Practitioner Dr Mariam Chaalan believes visibility is key to encouraging culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) women to engage in preventative care.
"It's about normalising the conversation, creating space for that trust, offering real choices, whether that's seeing a female GP or accessing interpreter services or doing that self collection," said Dr Chaalan, who's part of the federal government's Own It campaign that promotes the self-collect cervical screening test.
It's not just another medical test, it's a chance to prevent cancer. And everyone deserves that chance no matter where they come from.
This episode of SBS Examines asks what needs to be done to remove the stigma around cancer screening for women in CALD communities.
