To maintain your health, it’s best to consider nutrition and regular exercise. But as well as that, it’s important to have regular health checks. The most common diseases among Brazilians are heart disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory disease. In this article, rather than telling you about the diseases themselves, I’d like to tell you about how Brazil is promoting prevention among its citizens.

I think most of you would know about pink ribbons, a movement that started in the USA in the 1980s. Family members of a patient who died from breast cancer made pink ribbons in the hope that other families would not have to suffer the same misfortune. Following that, a movement was launched to bring awareness to all Americans about the importance and methods of detecting breast cancer early.


In Brazil we don’t call it pink ribbon. It’s known here as “Outubro Rosa” (Pink October). They call on people to have breast screening in October on the TV and radio, and raise awareness about the importance of early detection. Shops around the city participate in the campaign too. This sportswear store donates profits from sales of the T-shirts in the display window to a hospital that does breast reconstruction surgery. And I saw a lot of other stores decorating their display windows in pink.


This year I noticed Outubro Rosa at a wine store, which was selling all its rosé wines for 20% off in October.
They also illuminate some buildings around the city in pink.
The purpose is to raise awareness of the importance of breast cancer screening.
The digits in the clocks in São Paulo were also pink during October.




In Brazil they display different colors every month from January to December to promote prevention of different diseases. In some months there are 2 or 3 colors. They use colors to draw people’s attention to diseases and health and to improve people’s knowledge about them. The months and the colors were apparently selected from the campaigns already being run by doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and non-governmental organizations.
So, let’s take a look at the colors of the months and their meanings, starting with January.
January: White – Mental health awareness
February: Purple – Fighting Hansen’s disease
Orange – Leukemia awareness
March: Navy blue – Colorectal cancer prevention
April: Blue – Autism awareness
Yellow – Importance of workplace safety
May: Yellow – Traffic accident prevention
June: Orange – Anemia prevention
Red - Importance of donating blood
July: Yellow – Bone cancer and viral hepatitis prevention
August: Gold – Breastfeeding awareness
September: Green – Organ donation awareness
Red – Cardiovascular disease prevention
Yellow – Suicide prevention
October: Pink – Breast cancer prevention
November: Blue – Prostate cancer and diabetes prevention
Gold – Childhood cancer prevention
December: Red – AIDS prevention
Orange – Skin cancer prevention

November is prostate cancer and diabetes prevention. In Brazil 20% of patients in whom prostate cancer is found are already in an advanced stage of the disease, so this year too they are calling on more men to raise their awareness and to have regular checkups. During November, the color of the digits in the clock in the photo above changes to blue.

The number of people suffering from diabetes in Brazil increased by 61.8% between 2006 and 2016, which is a concern, and given that the majority of those people were female, it’s probably a matter of various hospitals running events to explain diabetes and calling on people to get tested.

I guess every country runs a variety of campaigns about disease prevention.
I wish you all good health.