RFD firefighters Rhett Bradford and Randy Seal presented a check Nov. 26 for $1500 to Belinda Johnson, CNO of Russellville Hospital after a T-shirt selling fundraiser helped raise the money during October.

The fundraiser sponsored by the Russellville Fire Department during the month of October helped raise the money. Many women in the area will now be able to receive potentially life-saving procedures free of charge.

The money was raised during the month of October through the sale of breast cancer awareness shirts. Johnson said the money would go into a fund set up to help qualified women receive mammograms and ultrasounds.

“There has been a misunderstanding in the past that this money is used for annual screenings, but what we use this money for is to help people who have found a lump or have other reasons to believe they need to have a more thorough procedure completed,” Johnson said.

Johnson said there are ways for some women to qualify for these procedures by signing up through the health department, but for those who do not qualify there might not be any other way for them to have the procedures that could possibly save their lives.

“These are the women that we are able to help with this money,” Johnson said. “To qualify for the health department program, you must be over 50 years old, but the younger a woman is when she is diagnosed with breast cancer, the more aggressive the type of cancer is.”

Johnson said that early screenings in that case are vital in being able to treat the cancer.

“We appreciated the Russellville Fire Department for making this possible and for continuing to help us each year.”

In 2013 an estimated 232,340 new cases of invasive breast cancer were expected to be diagnosed among women in the U.S. according to the American Cancer Society. In 2014 the expected total of new cases of invasive breast cancer to be diagnosed is 232,670. Women younger than 45 are expected to make up nearly 11 percent of that total based on 2014 statistics from the ACS.