Angelina Jolie's fine work as a role model

Hollywood star Angelina Jolie's best-remembered part may ultimately be as a role model for confronting women's abiding fear of cancer and radical treatment. Her first-person account in The New York Times two years ago of her decision to have a double mastectomy to avoid a hereditary form of breast cancer sent an inspiring message to women prone to denial of early symptoms and fearful of seeking early diagnosis.

To many activists and medical authorities that remained her finest role, one that reached a huge print and electronic audience - until this week. Now she has won another round of international acclaim by going into print again about her decision to have her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed, because of a 50 per cent chance of developing a hereditary form of deadly ovarian cancer.

She accepted medical advice that the best time to have the surgery was when she was 10 years younger than the earliest onset of cancer in her female relatives. As a result the 39-year-old has gone into menopause and will have no more children, but she will still be there for the six she has with her husband, fellow Hollywood heartthrob Brad Pitt.

Jolie's story combines love, fear, courage, sacrifice and the wonders of genetic science with big-name appeal. Hopefully this will help raise awareness among Hong Kong women. It is also timely, given moves by the government towards stepping up cancer screening. It has just ordered a study into screening for breast cancer, as it prepares to roll out a pilot scheme to check for colorectal cancer at the end of this year at the earliest. The government does not offer proactive screening for breast cancer, unlike on the mainland, in Taiwan and in Singapore, though concern groups do so for low-income women over 40.

This is despite a finding of a survey of 2,242 cancer patients by the city's Breast Cancer Foundation that about a third of women with breast cancer symptoms wait more than three months before seeing a doctor, increasing the risks.