Cancer prevention project for rural women in Tamil Nadu Sydney Medical School, Weill Cornell Medical College (USA), Cancer Council Australia and Christian Medical College Vellore, India are working together to build a cancer prevention partnership for women in Tamil Nadu, India. Cervical and breast cancers are the most common cancers amongst Indian women. The focus of this collaboration is on breast and cervical cancer prevention. “This innovative cancer prevention program implemented by Christian Medical College, Vellore in partnership with International organizations has empowered rural women in India to have access to early screening and care for the highly prevalent cancer cervix at their doorstep at a very affordable cost”, said Dr Rita Isaac, Professor & Head of Rural Unit for Health and Social Affairs (RUHSA) Department. The ‘Educate, Screen and Treat’ program is intended to detect breast and cervical cancer and initiate treatment in the early stages of disease. The University of Sydney has an international reputation in cancer screening epidemiology and in health literacy. The Cancer Prevention project is based in RUHSA, the rural hospital of Christian Medical College (CMC), south of Chennai and is jointly funded by Sydney Medical School, the University of Sydney’s International Program Development Fund, Weill Cornell Medical College and Cancer Council Australia. The project involves community-based peer education and implementation of cervical cancer screening through 18 community-health-centre-based clinics in the K.V Kuppam block of Tamil Nadu. “In a resource-poor setting like rural Tamil Nadu, there is good evidence that visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) is an effective and low-cost strategy for detecting early precancerous lesions of cervix and thereby reducing the incidence of advanced invasive forms of cervical cancer and that clinical breast examination might lower breast cancer mortality”, says Sydney project leader and Director of the Office for Global Health, Associate Professor Lyndal Trevena.
Dr Rita Isaac and Associate Professor Lyndal Trevena
Dr Rita Isaac with the community-based women’s group
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