MAMI Puts Breast Health at the Centre of Women’s Month

Every August, South Africa turns its attention to the women who hold families and communities together — and MAMI (Melrose Arch Mammography) sees Women’s Month as the perfect cue for Johannesburg women to treat breast health as an ordinary act of self-care. Operating from Melrose Arch, the centre wants women to stop parking breast checks under “someday” and start booking them, and it is inviting anyone unsure of where to start to come and ask.

Across the country, Women’s Month is a season for weighing up the health, safety and wellbeing of women. A breast imaging practice sees an obvious way to act on that. Catching disease early is still among the surest routes to better outcomes, and it hinges on women being able to reach accurate imaging and feeling settled enough to make the call. MAMI is hoping August becomes the month that first appointment gets made.

A centre built around women’s imaging

MAMI is the new face of Parklane Women’s Imaging Centre. The same team, radiologists and state-of-the-art equipment have simply moved into a roomy, easy-to-reach department in Melrose Arch. Parklane was the first internationally accredited breast imaging unit in Africa, and that legacy still guides how the team works day to day.

Patients at MAMI are seen by seasoned doctors using the newest imaging technology for Mammograms, ultrasound and biopsy. Clinical excellence is the goal, yet the team gives equal attention to keeping the setting calm and caring. For plenty of women, the real hurdle is not the scan but the worry that surrounds it, and the practice has designed both its rooms and its manner to soften precisely that.

Arranging a Mammogram here is simple, and the staff are well practised at walking first-time patients through every step of what lies ahead. That reassurance counts, since a woman who understands the process is much more likely to come back for her next routine check.

Accreditation that stands behind the results

MAMI holds a distinction no other unit in South Africa can claim: the Breast Imaging Center of Excellence designation from the American College of Radiology. The ACR conferred it in 2022, capping a run of individual accreditations — mammography in 2017, MRI in 2018, stereotactic biopsy in 2020 and breast ultrasound in 2021.

That ACR gold seal stands for the highest standard of image quality and patient safety. It goes only to facilities that satisfy ACR Practice Parameters and Technical Standards after a peer-review assessment by board-certified physicians and medical physicists. That review probes image quality, the credentials of staff, the suitability of equipment, and the quality control and quality assurance programmes at work. For any woman choosing where to be scanned, the accreditation is a plain signal that the images her doctor depends on meet an internationally recognised benchmark.

A full range of breast services

A single test is only the beginning of what the centre provides. Beyond mammography, MAMI offers breast ultrasound, breast biopsies carried out under ultrasound or mammographic guidance with local anaesthesia, bone density and body composition scans, and breast cancer scar management massage. It is likewise the only practice nationally to provide cancer cryoablation — a service that marks it out among South Africa’s foremost breast cancer teams.

Such range lets a patient travel from a first Breast Examination through any later imaging or procedure inside the same accredited unit, in the care of radiologists who already know her history. Should a biopsy be required, a biopsy needle collects small samples that go to the pathologist for microscopy and further tests, helping establish whether a lump is a cancer and, if it is, of what type. Holding that whole pathway under one roof cuts down on both the waiting and the worry that so often accompany breast investigations.

The centre welcomes a broad spread of patients, from women arriving for a first routine screening to those returning to follow up an earlier finding. That variety is a big part of why the team leans so heavily on continuity of care. Where a woman is scanned, assessed and, if required, biopsied within the same accredited unit, her radiologists gradually assemble a clear view of her breast health across the years. It is frequently the comparison between this year’s images and last year’s that lets a faint change be caught early.

Why the timing matters

Women’s Month makes an obvious prompt, yet MAMI is deliberate about presenting breast health as a year-round habit rather than a one-time gesture. Screening pays off most when it is steady, and the practice urges women to picture an ongoing routine shaped by their age, family history and their doctor’s advice. What makes August’s awareness so useful is exactly its power to convert good intentions into a booking.

The team is also alive to how much women shoulder for everyone else’s health, regularly at the cost of their own checks. This month’s message is plainly put: tending to your own health is no indulgence, and a scan booked today is one fewer thing left to defer. By lowering the practical and emotional hurdles to being checked, MAMI hopes to watch more Johannesburg women fold breast imaging into their calendar for good.

Ease of access rounds out the message. Melrose Arch was picked as a location that is simple to get to, complete with parking and an inviting department that carries none of the feel of a hospital corridor. For women who have delayed a scan because it seemed intimidating, that environment is meant to render the visit as unremarkable and unrushed as any other appointment. The centre far prefers a woman to turn up full of questions than not to turn up at all.

Anyone wanting to know more about the centre and what it offers will find the full picture on the MAMI website at https://mammogram.co.za/.

About MAMI (Melrose Arch Mammography)

MAMI (Melrose Arch Mammography) is a dedicated breast imaging centre in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg, and the new face of Parklane Women’s Imaging Centre. Its services span mammograms, breast ultrasound, breast biopsies, bone density and body composition scans, breast cancer scar management massage, and cancer cryoablation. Under Diagnostic Radiologist and Managing Director Dr Peter Schoub, it is the sole unit in South Africa holding the American College of Radiology Breast Imaging Center of Excellence designation, extending the legacy of the first internationally accredited breast imaging unit in Africa.

Media Contact
MAMI (Melrose Arch Mammography)
Email: info@melrosemammo.co.za
Phone: +27 11 484 3149
Website: https://mammogram.co.za/