Funding boost to advance cervical cancer testing
A pap smear is a procedure to test for cervical cancer in women. Cervical cancer vaccination, screening, treatment and palliative care are among the existing equitable public health strategies for its prevention and management.
What you need to know:
- Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women, with latest numbers showing that in 2022 alone, there were around 660, 000 new cases.
- In the same year, about 94 per cent of the 350,000 deaths caused by cervical cancer occurred in low- and middle-income countries.
Kenya has received a boost in clinical research for cervical cancer after the Aga Khan University (AKU) got a grant to study a new and cheaper way for testing the disease.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded AKU a grant of Sh19.6 million to come up with a low-cost hand-held three-dimensional (3D) medical imaging device for detecting cervical cancer. 3D medical imaging allows for a deeper precision on our bodies’ images, indicating exact locations and characterisations to help in improving diagnosis of diseases.
The NIH grant is part of a two-year Sh261 million grant funded by the National Cancer Institute, which will be used to complete research and development and conduct clinical testing of the device at AKU in Kenya, the University of Science and Technology in Malawi and at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine in the United States.
Dr Elkanah Omenge, AKU medical college chairperson at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, said the grant will help the school make strides in addressing the burden of cervical cancer in the country. “Our goal is to play a role in the early detection, diagnosis and treatment of cervical cancer patients, which will help combat this preventable disease,” he said.
In Kenya, the study will be in partnership with a 3D imaging start-up called Pensievision starting this September. “We spent years in research and development, so we are now extremely excited to start clinical tests with patients in three countries. Being able to partner with health leaders at Aga Khan University has been an incredible opportunity for proving new life-saving technologies in the prevention of cervical cancer,” said Dr Joe Carson, the co-principal investigator on this grant and Pensievision’ s chief technology officer.
Previous studies on 3D imaging have also been conducted in other parts of the world like China. In one of the studies published in the journal Annals of Translational Medicine, the scientists show Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) 3D reconstruction of cervical cancer tumours. “MRI-3D reconstruction showed larger cervical cancer maximum tumour diameters, which resulted in an upstaging of approximately 30 per cent of patients,” shows the study.
According to the World Health Organization, cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women, with latest numbers showing that in 2022 alone, there were around 660, 000 new cases.
In the same year, about 94 per cent of the 350,000 deaths caused by cervical cancer occurred in low- and middle-income countries. About 16.8 million Kenyan girls aged 15 and above are at risk of developing cervical cancer, which the WHO says is caused by a persistent Human papillomavirus (HPV).
A study published in scientific journal BMC Public Health shows that cervical cancer screening in Kenya is still low. “Age, history of abortion, modern contraceptive use, number of living children, exposure to the media, visits to health facilities in the past 12 months, wealth index, community educational level and exposure to the community media had positive associations with cervical cancer screening,” shows the study.
“To increase cervical cancer screening uptake in Kenya, have public health interventions targeting uneducated women, those from poor backgrounds, those who did not use modern contraceptive methods, those who did not receive media exposure and those who did not visit a health facility in the previous 12 months,” they advise.
