Every year, the world celebrates Movember in the month of November to raise awareness about men’s health. The ‘Mo’ in Movember is from ‘moustache’, which founders Travis Garone and Luke Slattery realised wasn’t seen as much then and since then has gone on to become the identity of the movement. It has been conducted by the Movember Foundation since 2003 in Australia and has since seen a lot of people come together at the global level to join the cause. The movement primarily raises awareness about prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and men’s mental health and suicide prevention.

In a first for the series on men’s health in November, Mid-day Online focuses on prostate cancer. While the awareness about the disease remains only to those who suffer from it or friends and family around them, the understanding outside of it is debatable. So, what is prostate cancer? Dr Santosh S. Waigankar, consultant, urologic oncology and robotic surgery at Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, explains, “Prostate cancer is nothing but an uncontrolled (malignant) growth of cells in the prostate gland. The prostate, a walnut-sized gland in men, is placed just below the bladder and in front of the rectum, gripping the urethra. The urethra is a tube that takes urine out of the bladder. The only function of the prostate is to produce and store fluid.”