Cervical cancer: Expert tasks Nigerians on increased vaccination, screening

On Apr 3, 2023

To eradicate cervical cancer by 2030, Nigeria must join the rest of the world to realise the feat through increased vaccination and screening for girls and women, Prof. Oliver Ezechi, a Director of Research at the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NiMR), said.

Ezechi spoke on Sunday at the Cervical Cancer Prevention Project tagged: ” For Girls and Women by Girls and Women”. He said the country was far behind owing to the percentage of girls and women who had yet to be vaccinated and screened.

Cancer of the uterine cervix, commonly known as cervical cancer, is the fourth most common cancer among women globally and majorly caused by the Human Papiloma Virus (HPV).

Newsmen report that the project is in collaboration with Actions for Collaborative Community Engaged Strategies for Human Papilloma Virus (ACCESS-HPV). The project is funded by U.S. National Institute of Health and National Cancer Institute to also support the Nigerian National Cancer Prevention and Control programme.

According to the expert, ” We must not be left behind among the committee of nations to eradicate cervical cancer by 2023 and this is in line with the three pillars of the World Health Organisation.

“So, 90 per cent of our girls should be vaccinated, 70 per cent of women must be screen and also providing treatment to cases detected”.

Ezechi, who is the team leader of the project, said that the programme was initiated to create adequate awareness and engage girls and women and scale up the awareness on cervical cancer vaccination and screening in the country. He said that 28 women died from cancer of the cervix daily in Nigeria, noting that it was one of the most preventable cancer.

” One of the motive of this project is to ensure that 28 women don’t die from cervical cancer daily in the country from a diseases that is preventable if you vaccinate girls who are 6years to 15years and screen women who are 30 years and above.

“To prevent these deaths, we came up with the idea to engage girls and women on the best way to create awareness on cervical cancer.

” There are different challenges ranging from poor awareness, cultural belief, lack of access to vaccination and screening,” he said.

According to him, the project received 525 ideas from girls and women on how to upscale hpv vaccination and screening for cervical cancer.

“After placing advert we received 525 ideas, we selected 15 out of the entries we received , we will shortlist the number to seven before settling for the best idea to adopt,” he said.

Also, one of the collaborator, Prof. Juliet Iwelunmor from the University of St. Louis in the U.S., said the objective of the project was to stop the death of 28 women who died from cancer of the cervix daily. Iwelunmor said that ” only 10 per cent of women had been screened ,while 13 per cent of girls had been vaccinated in Nigeria and we want to change that narrative with Nigerian women leading the way.

“We have teams from the six geo-political zones in the country participating in this project with the vision to end cervical cancer”.

Speaking also, Dr Uchechukwu Nwokwu, Assistant Director of the National Cancer Control Programme at the Federal Ministry of Health, said the ministry was working with all its partners to eliminate cancer of the cervix. Nwokwu said the government has put in place measures through its primary, secondary and tertiary preventions to address cancer in the country..

“The ministry is working with all partners to ensure the eradication of the disease and there is also the primary prevention which have to do with the promotion of hpv vaccine while the secondary prevention is to ensure that women above 30years have access to screening.”

“The last one, which is the tertiary prevention, is to provide manpower, training and infrastructure to address cancer in the country,” he said.

NAN