To illustrate the sober truth of breast cancer as a global disease, a linear map, stretching from New Zealand to the coast of California identified countries by color in a news magazine.

The United States, an appropriate red, was tagged as having the greatest number of breast cancer cases, with China close behind. India, recording the most deaths from the disease, is hamstrung by too few imaging facilities for women, while Mozambique, poor, but spared Western diets, claims the lowest incidence of breast cancer.

It was a Crayola view of a world where those at risk not only wear blue jeans with red, white and blue affection, but also saris, African head wraps, burkas and Russian furs.

Once considered a disease of North America and Western Europe, breast cancer now affects women from Australia to Brazil. Historically, the United States does document the most cases, but if researchers are right, by 2020, about 70 percent of malignancies of the breast will occur in developing countries.

Treatment, world-wide, is not keeping pace with the spread of the disease. Annually, billions of dollars are spent diagnosing and treating breast cancer in this country, but consider the plight of Indian women.

Reporters for Time magazine found only one comprehensive center for mammograms in Pune, India, a city where three million women live.

And, in the Ukraine, they discovered adequate centers for screening, but a shortage of x-ray film. When interviewed, doctors shared their frustration. Instead of two views of a woman's breast, they filmed one, saving film to screen more women.

Sadly, mammograms are often tied to shame in India, where women with breast cancer may be asked to eat separately from their relatives, who believe the disease is contagious.

Patients in Egypt have confessed to doctors feelings of dread when telling their husbands they have received a diagnosis of a malignancy. They fear their husbands will leave them and they will face follow-up treatment with no support.

The World Health Organization and other groups are working to educate women and their families around the globe, separating the truth about malignancies from fiction, confronting superstitions in villages and stressing the need for yearly mammograms.

Too often, the problem confronting preventive measures is money. In Japan, a mammogram costs $90, out-of-pocket expense for a woman with a factory job.

In Kenya, the screening is more affordable, but earning power is often no more than $1 a day.

Still, there is scattered good news in the global fight against breast cancer. In Mexico, the country's national health insurance plan now includes $20,000 for breast cancer treatment, and Jordan's modern oncology center, named for King Hussein, is a regional resource for Arab women battling malignancies.

The personal stories of breast cancer survivors, found in this newspaper during October, have been moving, personal odysseys of women and one generous man who shared their journeys through frightening diagnoses, surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

We are indebted to them for their honesty and their witness to time in a land of illness, requiring not only medical treatment, but a strong spirit and daily courage.

In this country, a malignancy of the breast has been described as "terror, eclipsed by hope," as treatment numbers more and more patients cancer-free. Research goes on as one in eight women is diagnosed with breast cancer this year.

In remote areas of the globe, there are women, with cancer of the breast, who have felt a lump, but cannot name it. Miles from a hospital, their only choice is to walk to have it examined.

I only have to walk down the hall, following a mammogram, to meet the radiologist. Once, in that room, I saw a doctor, holding a magnifying glass, examining film of an imaged breast, inch by inch. "Thank you for what you do for us," I said. She smiled. We were on common ground, both vulnerable to an unseen disease. It gave new meaning to "women of the world."

Judy Elliott is an award-winning columnist from Marietta.