Making cancer a word people are not afraid to say

More than 150 women attended a free breast cancer awareness and screening camp in India that Saiyette Aima helped organise this year with doctors from the National Cancer Institute and AIIMS New Delhi. Several were identified as requiring further medical follow-up. What she remembers most, she says, are the conversations. "Many women asked questions they had never felt comfortable asking before. Doctors took time to explain concerns and next steps."

Her work around cancer began when she was 10 and her grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. "Watching someone who had always been the caregiver suddenly need care herself changed how I viewed illness," she says. Her first step was donating her hair through Friends of Cancer Patients' Locks of Hope programme. That led her to launch For Her, For Hope, a fundraising campaign supporting cancer patients and their families. It raised over AED 10,000, and YallaGive named her Fundraising Hero of the Month.

“Cancer should never be a word we are afraid to say. Awareness gives people the knowledge to recognise when something is wrong, speak up sooner, and seek help before it is too late.”

Saiyette Aima

She also realised, she says, that many young people rarely discussed cancer beyond the disease itself, with little awareness of the emotional, financial or social challenges patients and families face. So she founded Pink for Purpose, a cancer awareness platform through which she has organised talks, workshops and podcasts, and interviews with oncologists, surgeons and healthcare professionals, to make information about prevention, early detection and recovery more accessible.

When she first got involved, she thought her main job would be speaking up and raising awareness. "What I didn't expect was how much I would learn just by listening," she says. One lesson that has stayed with her is that "awareness alone is not enough." Someone can understand the importance of early detection and still be unable to access screening, she says, and for others the barrier is cost, cultural stigma or simply not knowing where to find reliable information.

Today she is building an AI-powered health platform designed to make health information easier to understand and access. Beyond the technical side, she says, she spends a lot of time thinking about accessibility and usability and how information is communicated. She is a student at Dubai College.

"More than anything, cancer advocacy has taught me the importance of listening," she says.

CareCheck, the AI-enabled breast health platform, is now active, and she says it has drawn positive reviews from experts and doctors. Her work has been covered internationally, in Gulf News, Khaleej Times and the Times of India.