Cervical Cancer Action - New Options for Cervical Cancer Screening and Treatment in Low-Resource Settings

Cervical cancer kills 270,000 women each year - mainly women in the developing world and in the prime of their productive lives. Yet cervical cancer is preventable by screening asymptomatic women for precancerous cervical lesions and treating the lesions before they progress to invasive disease. This brief summarizes the current evidence on various options, namely cervical cytology (Pap test), HPV (human papillomavirus) DNA testing and visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) for screening, and cryotherapy for treatment, with a focus on approaches appropriate for low-resource settings.

Cervical Cancer Action: A Global Coalition to Stop Cervical Cancer (CCA) was founded in 2007 to expedite the global availability, affordability, and accessibility of new and improved cervical cancer prevention technologies to women in developing countries.