INDIA: Often-Inaccessible Screening Could Cut Deaths

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2009. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

INDIA: Often-Inaccessible Screening Could Cut Deaths

Courier Journal (Louisville) (10.18.09) - Thursday, October 22, 2009
Laura Ungar

Awareness about cervical cancer in India has grown since the introduction last year of the Gardasil human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. However, its cost and the inaccessibility of cervical cancer screening in India prevent turning that awareness into prevention, said Dr. Partha Basu, an oncologist at the government-run Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute in Kolkata.

The three-shot Gardasil series costs $180 in India, about half its US price but still costly for most women living in a country where more than one-third of the population live on less than $1 a day. Fewer than 3 percent of Indian women ages 18-69 are regularly screened for cervical cancer, compared with about 84 percent of US women above age 18, according to the World Health Organization.

Several hospital-based screening programs have been supported by the government-funded Indian Council of Medical Research. However, "Since these programs are sanctioned for a specific time period, they cannot be absorbed in the system as a continuous activity because of lack of resources," according to a 2007 Indian Journal of Medical Sciences report.

In April, Chittaranjan announced a five-year HPV screening initiative that is expected to reach 50,000 women. Meanwhile, every year in India 132,000 women get cervical cancer and 74,000 women die from it.

Since 1991, CDC's National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program for low-income and uninsured Americans has diagnosed more than 2,000 cervical cancer cases and more than 114,000 pre-cancerous cervical lesions. CDC aims to reduce mortality from the disease from about 2.4 to 2 per 100,000 population. In comparison, India's cervical cancer mortality rate is 17.8 per 100,000.
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