Cervical cancer prevention

Cervical cancer remains one of the major public health issues in India. Lack of knowledge about cervical cancer and its preventive measures, the absence of organized screening program, and poor access to diagnosis and treatment are identified as the potential barriers to reduce the burden of cervical cancer in India.

The aim of this proposed program is to reduce the burden of cervical cancer in Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu state, India by implementing an evidence-based organized cervical cancer prevention program. The merit of this program is that it will use an advanced rapid HPV DNA test (care HPV) that will produce the result in 3 hours; hence the treatment can be given on the same day. This will greatly support the ‘screen-and-treat approach' that is recommended by WHO recently. To achieve this goal, the program has three objectives; increase the women with satisfactory or good knowledge to 20%, promote the screening behaviour of women to 30%, to show a 30% reduction in cervical cancer incidence rate.

The total duration of the program will be five years. The key players of the program are public health professionals, physicians, nurses, community health workers, members of women self-group. Formal educational sessions, scheduled screening campaigns, counselling, treatment on the same day, referral for diagnosis and treatment, follow-up of referrals are the major activities of the program. There will be one mid-term and one final evaluation to assess the impact of the program.

Thus by implementing evidence-based organized screening program in Coimbatoredistrict, the burden of cervical cancer will be reduced significant