She is a survivor of breast cancer but more than that she is a lady of substance and too very courageous. She is Ritu Biyani who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000 but she apart from surviving and fighting against this diseases she wandered around the country to spread awareness about breast cancer among both men and women. She is a passionate traveller, a professional dental surgeon, a mountaineer, skydiver, paratrooper and the first woman to do a solo drive to the four tips of India and also the person to do the First mother-daughter duo expedition on cancer awareness across the country. She has won many laurels and has been a record holder at Limca Book of Records India for her great efforts. Ritu was diagnosed with breast cancer in the year 2000 for which she had to go through the chemotherapy that later led her to go bald. Once a patient visited her clinic and asked her whether she has donated her hair to Tirupati Balaji, in the reply she told him that she is suffering from breast cancer. This reply of hers made the patient anxious and he immediately left the clinic as he was thinking that this diseases in communicable. Then Ritu realized that there is so much of ignorance prevailing about cancer even among the literate people, then what to wonder about the illiterate people? And she decided that she would use her passion for travelling to spread awareness among people about breast cancer. She received very surprising results during the travelling for her mission she realized that whether it’s urban or rural for about 90 percent of women were unaware of the breast cancer and its symptoms, 70-80 percent were unaware about cervical, oral and other types of cancer in our country. Ritu organized 140 workshops, covering 30,220 kms in 177days in 26 states and around 26,000 people were counted to attend them. Ritu did spread new information that 1% of males also get breast cancer she travelled extensively in rural and tribal areas also where she faced the real life challenges while staying with the tribal people without any proper accommodation. She had also her first International Awareness workshop and now she wholly wants to focus upon her national and international awareness programmes.
