TEHRAN — A scheme with the aim of training blind women to help detect breast cancer has started in Iran.

According to the plan, Isfahan welfare organization trains blind women and recruits them to use their sensitive touch to help detect breast cancer as they can do it earlier and more precisely than sighted doctors. 
So far, two to three doctors have expressed readiness to recruit such medical tactile examiners to detect the slightest abnormality on a female breast, Mehr news agency quoted Marzieh Farshad, director general of the organization, as saying.

Farshad went on to regret that, in general, people with disabilities find it much harder to land jobs and employers are reluctant to hire these group of people. “This entails implementation of effective measures to alleviate the widespread unemployment rate among people with disabilities,” she stated. 

According to My Handicap website, Dr. Frank Hoffmann was the creator of the project idea “discovering hands”. The gynecologist from the German town Duisburg wanted to improve the early diagnosis of any cancer-related changes like carcinomas by employing medical tactile examiners (MUts).

“Discovering hands” was officially launched in 2006 as a pilot training. The first two MTUs graduated one year later. Since then, the cities of Düren, Mainz, Nuremberg and Halle (all in Germany) have been offering MTU training courses.

MQ/NM/MG