Cervical cancer screening begins at Battor Catholic Hospital
More than 2,000 women at Battor, a community in the North Tongu District of the Volta Region, are to undergo a cervical cancer screening at the Battor Catholic Hospital, a cervical cancer screening centre.
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The screening is under a project being funded by GIZ in collaboration with the German Rotary Volunteer Doctors (GRVD).
The screening will be done within a two-year period at the hospital, and some community health officers will visit women in the community who may not be able to go to the hospital to participate in the exercise.
Giving an overview of the North Tongu Cervical Cancer Project at a workshop at Battor to discuss and start the project, Dr Kofi Effah, a gynaecologist, said the screening would involve a self-sampling method where the women would have the chance to conduct self-examination using a Delphi screener, which, according to him, “is easy to use, culturally acceptable, comfortable to sample, and independent of a gynaecologist visit”.
About Delphi screener
The Delphi screener is a new self-sampling device that is designed to overcome the challenge of limited resources and lack of access to health facilities and qualified staff to undertake sample-taking and analysis.
During the screening, the Delphi screener will be used in combination with the Arbor Vita E6 onco-protein test, a new low-cost on-site test developed to detect E6 onco-proteins of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) 16 and HPV 18, which together cause most cervical cancers.
The test is designed to overcome the major limitation to implementing cervical cancer screening in countries with limited resources due to lack of access to infrastructure for more sophisticated tests.
Also, health workers with little training can screen women with the Arbor Vita E6 test, and results will be obtained within three hours.
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Problems of cervical cancer screening in Ghana.
Dr Effah said one of the challenges to cervical cancer screening in the country was the lack of organised national cervical screening programme that would get every woman involved in the exercise.
“What we have is opportunistic screening and this is not good as we will not be able to address the situation effectively,” he said.
Also, he said, there was difficulty in getting access to those who needed to be screened to undergo such exercise and possibly recall them when they were diagnosed to be positive.
Dr Effah said it was also difficult for the women at risk of cervical cancer to reach the few centres and most patients came to the hospitals with advanced cancers.
The way forward
To improve access to cervical cancer treatment in the country, Dr Effah said there was the need for treatment of the disease to be captured under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and called for the extension of the screening exercise to other parts of the country.
Health Director’s remarks
The Volta Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Joseph Teye Nuerty, called for a concerted effort by all health professionals in the region to intensify their health education at the out-patient units and other centres to create awareness about cervical cancer.
He also appealed to all health workers in the North Tongu and South Tongu districts to take advantage of the services at the Battor Catholic Hospital to encourage others to go through the test and also show a high level of professionalism to their clients.