Guyana
Guyana, the second poorest nation in the Americas, has the third highest incidence and rate of death from cervical cancer in the Western Hemisphere. Cervical cancer is preventable through screening, yet the indigenous women of Guyana have never before been screened due to the extreme difficulty encountered in reaching their remote villages.
The Cervical Cancer Team of Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps travels by jeep, plane and ox cart, and soon on foot, by canoe, and by parachute, to the remote savannahs and rainforests of Guyana to provide medical care for the Amerindian women. Our teams screen for cervical cancer, remove pre-cancerous lesions, perform hysterectomies when necessary and treat cervical cancer with life-saving radical hysterectomies. In collaboration with our Guyanese colleagues, we are able to provide radiation therapy for women with advanced cervical cancer. The team is also researching new techniques to supplement Pap smear screening and enable women to be diagnosed and treated in one visit.
We have found that the incidence of cervical disease in this previously-unscreened population is over ten times higher than that in the United States. And, while new vaccines for the HPV virus that causes cervical cancer may be effective in the US where over 70% of cervical cancer is associated with HPV types 16 and 18, our Guyanese patients appear to have different HPV types, and only 18% of our cancer patients have been found to have types 16 and 18. If these findings are borne out in larger studies, this could indicate that the currently available HPV vaccine would be ineffective for them. Ongoing research into HPV types will elucidate the nature of cervical disease in our patients.
To make our program sustainable in Guyana, we also work closely with the Ministers of Health and Amerindian Affairs, and the University of Guyana and with Guyana's medical staff at Georgetown Public Hospital to establish a gynecologic cancer service and develop Guyana's national cervical cancer screening protocol. We are also establishing the Remote Area Medical Center on the savannah at a location called Mountain Point, where Amerindian women can be treated without making the very difficult journey to the coastal cities for medical care,What started as a Pap smear screening program in November 2003 has evolved into a comprehensive cervical cancer program that can put to good use the skills and knowledge of volunteers in the fields of women's health, pathology, cytology, GYN Oncology and radiation therapy, and even medical anthropology. Join us in the stark beauty of the Rupununi savannah or the lush, nearly impenetrable rain forest, to improve the health of the indigenous women of Guyana.
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