October is the Pink Ribbon month that promotes Breast Cancer Awareness and Early Detection, and it’s just a couple of days into November. So I’d like to do a recap of two of the Pink events which were special occasions of a personal nature.

The first one was the annual Estée Lauder Philippines Breast Cancer Campaign event for 2025. Part of a global campaign that was founded in 1992 by the late Evelyn Lauder, this is the company’s largest corporate social impact program. The campaign promotes ‘Breast Care Is Self-Care’, championing life-saving breast health measures as part of everyday wellness routines. It also advocates Breast Cancer prevention and early detection, to increase chances of survival; acknowledging the fact that several breast cancer risk factors cannot be avoided or controlled. And that’s especially important here in the Philippines, where mortalities from breast cancer is still the highest in the ASEAN region.

Even if I was booked on a flight to the Frankfurt Buchmesse later in the evening, I attended this afternoon event because invited to be resource persons on one segment of the program were Cesca Litton-Kalaw and her sister, Issa Litton. Cesca had just finished her chemotherapy treatment for her breast cancer; and was kind and brave enough to share her experience - in the hope that it would guide and inspire the young women in the audience not to take self-examinations, and annual mammograms, lightly.

It was ‘her own story’, and she was quick to say one cannot generalize, that each survivor will have her own journey. But there are common threads that run through these stories, and it’s by sharing them that one keeps cancer from being some journey filled with doubts, or even shame. The concept of support from family and/or friends, whether asked for or not, was then discussed - as sister Issa Litton was brought on stage. With the whole Litton family and Cesca’s husband, Tyke present; it was an afternoon of reminiscing, of tears mixed with laughter and compassion.

I recalled how during my conversations with I Can Serve volunteers in the past, they’d explain how some of the high incidence of breast cancer-related fatalities here can be attributed to how women from economically-challenged demographics refuse to be checked even when there are obvious lumps, or when in pain. And this is because they don’t want to be financial burdens to the family; or even have their husbands desert them, thinking they’re contagious and/or defective. Those are such sad and tragic realities of our persisting socio-cultural attitude towards breast cancer.

Estée Lauder had also invited Helping Women & Others (HWAO) President & Board Member Tang Singson to talk about the Philippine scenario of breast cancer from a non-Medical perspective. Founded by my sister, Libet C. Virata, along with Tang, Bettina Osmena and Camille Samson, who were then all cancer survivors (Camille’s was ovarian cancer, and she passed away in 2023), HWAO was formed in 2019, along with friends Gina Aboitiz, Marga Aboitiz-Zobel, Elena Coyiuto, and Dr. Liaa Cojuangco-Bautista. I sit on the Board as the token thorn - or as I like to joke; in the name of inclusivity, thanks to my prostate cancer history.

HWAO and Estée Lauder have shared history, having worked together on projects such as the Chemo-Compunding Clean Room at PGH (turnover was in 2022), and a Bio-Hood for the San Juan Medical Center (turnover in 2024). It’s been a partnership that even goes back to before HWAO was formed, as Estée would work with Libet, Tang and Bettina when they were members of an I Can Serve Fund-raising committee, and Camille’s eldest daughter used to work at Estée Lauder Philippines.

Then on the afternoon of October 17, the Philippine General Hospital’s refurbished Comprehensive Center for Ultrasound Diagnosis and Treatment in Obstetrics and Gynecology was inaugurated, the completion of a project of HWAO. The plaque mentions how the HWAO project is dedicated to the memory of Camille Samson - who was a patient at the ward when she was undergoing treatment for her ovarian cancer in 2021.

In fact, Camille was a patient during the May 2021 fire, and had to walk down several flights of stairs while her IV was still attached. She credits the exemplary PGH nurses and staff for taking good care of her amidst all the chaos and smoke. She even joked that if ever HWAO would embark on a project with the OB-GYN ward, she was ready to be the poster girl.

A PGH Certificate of Appreciation to HWAO was handed to Chairperson Libet Virata. It was a gesture of gratitude for how HWAO has repeatedly turned to PGH for it’s projects. If the first Chemo-Compounding Room was about doubling the PGH’s capacity to administer chemo treatments at any given day; this Ultrasound Diagnosis and Treatment center was taking a step back to improve the facilities where diagnosis, and recommended treatment, occur.

And that’s my Pink October!