Awareness about breast cancer: Pink Ribbon, USC join hands for greater outreach

Pink Ribbon Campaign and Utility Stores Corporation (USC) have inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to raise maximum awareness at grassroots level about breast cancer -a disease that causes death of nearly 40,000 women in the country every year.
As Utility Stores Corporation (USC) has a chain of more than 6,000 outlets with nearly 16,000 staff members and millions of customers walking in every day in 5,559 union councils across the country. The main objective of collaboration between USC and Pink Ribbon is to use this huge platform to spread necessary information about prevention of breast cancer.
At the MoU signing ceremony, Pink Ribbon was represented by its Chief Executive Omer Aftab, whereas the agreement was signed by Managing Director Khaqan Murtaza on behalf of Utility Stores Corporation.
Both organisations have mutually agreed to become Strategic Partners, aiming to utilise every possible option to create awareness among people about the deadly disease.
Pink Ribbon Campaign (PRC) follows the model of Public-Social-Private Partnership engaging corporate sector as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility. Omer Aftab termed the collaboration as a milestone, saying Utility Stores Corporation has its reach to millions of people across the country, and this will help Pink Ribbon to extend its message to a greater audience.
Khaqan Murtaza was also pleased to team up with Pink Ribbon as he believes PRC is working for this noble cause. He also stated that USC's widespread reach all over the country would be helpful in making people aware about breast cancer.
Pink Ribbon's initial goal was to raise awareness regarding breast cancer among at least 500,000 people this year. However, the collaboration with USC has enabled the campaign to target millions of Pakistanis at the street level.
Pink Ribbon is already running different programmes through community engagement in all four provinces including small districts like Jacobabad, Abbotabad, Nankana Sahab, Kasur, Sahiwal, Muzafarrabad, Mian Wali, Larkana, Chaghi, Nasirabad and Panjgoor.