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Vinegar Key Ingredient to Preventing Cervical Cancer in India By Joanne Silberner Special to the Informer from New America Media Cervical cancer used to kill more women in the United States than any other cancer. Today, deaths in the US are almost unheard of thanks to a decades-old test called a Pap smear, which allows for early detection and treatment. In India, however, tens of thousands of women still die each year from cervical cancer. “It’s just not possible for us to provide [the Pap test] as frequently as it is done in the West,” says Dr. Surendra Shastri, a cancer specialist at Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai. The Pap test requires trained personnel and well-equipped labs, which many parts of India
do not have. “So what do we do?” Shastri asks. “We can’t let the women die.” It turns out there may be a simple answer. It’s a cheap and easy test developed by scientists at Johns Hopkins University and other institutions. And it relies on something you probably have in your kitchen. Acid Test I came to the village of Dervan in the Indian state of Maharashtra to see how the test works. Doctors had set up a temporary clinic in the shell of an empty store. A sheet hung from the ceiling to provide some privacy. There was no electricity— not even a light bulb—in the storefront.
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A medical team at Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, India, poses with a woman who has just tested negative for cervical cancer, and her son who brought her in for screening. / Photo by Joanne Silberner
About a dozen Muslim women in headscarves had come for the test. One was on the exam table, her long brown skirt pushed aside. With her friends sitting nearby, she looked calm and ready. Dr. Archana Saunke took a cotton swab and applied a clear liquid to the woman’s cervix.
“We wait for one minute, and we see if there is any patch— yellowish patch,” she explained. If the liquid makes the normally pink cervix turn white or yellow, that means there are precancerous cells—cells that could become cancer. Within a minute or two, the doctor had some good news for
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her patient. “It’s normal,” Saunke said. The woman smiled broadly. When tests yield bad news and show precancerous cells, those can be removed on the spot with a squirt of liquid ni-
See CERVICAL on Page 19
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Primary Health Care • Pharmacy • Dental Care • Behavioral Health • Nutrition Services • Legal Services 18 Jan. 10, 2013 - Jan. 16, 2013
The Washington Informer
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