Cervical Cancer: Screening, Education, Hope
From Dartmouth Hitchcock’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center, December 2, 2013:
NCCC partners with Honduran cancer center to bring cervical cancer screening to rural Honduran women
NCCC physicians and researchers brought information and hope to the rural village women. The data they brought back to their labs for complex analysis will provide Honduran physicians information they need to create a comprehensive national plan to fight cervical cancer in Honduras.
The women travelled from 16 farming villages in the remote mountains of Honduras—some leaving at 4 a.m.–for "La Jornada," a cervical cancer screening and breast education clinic. Rooms in the school in El Rosario (a rural village of about 400 residents) were filled with exam tables and cubicles that villagers had made from trees cut earlier in the week. For two days researchers and physicians from La Liga Contra el Cancer in Honduras and Norris Cotton Cancer Center (NCCC) worked all day, screening 472 women for cervical cancer and human papillomavirus (HPV), leading information sessions on preventing HPV and how to do a breast self-exam, and guiding the women through an 8-minute survey about their background and education. The turnout was unprecedented as was the Jornada. Cancer prevention and screening is new to these rural villages…