Over 3,600 Malawian women fall sick with cervical cancer every year and two thirds of them die from the disease. It’s the most common type of cancer among the female population in the country, affecting the cervix of the uterus (accounting for 45.4% of all cancers among women) and resulting from infection by Human Papilloma Virus (HPV).
This heavy toll results from a combination of many factors: limited availability of the vaccine against HPV infection, which is at the origin of the cancerous lesions; high rates of HIV coinfection, which exponentially increase the risk of HPV infection turning into cancer; late diagnosis due to limited awareness and inadequate organization of screening; limited options for treatment (only two hospitals in the country offer cervical cancer surgery and there are no options for radiotherapy); and financial barriers to care.
In this first episode, we look at the importance of screening for cervical cancer.