A woman diagnosed with breast cancer in most high-income countries is very likely to survive. The opposite is true for the hundreds of thousands of women facing the same diagnosis in poor countries. Survival should not be a fluke of geography.
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Cervical cancer is almost entirely preventable via HPV vaccination for girls and cervical screening…None of this requires an oncologist or high-level cancer centre.
These cost-effective interventions can save millions of lives, if made affordable. Many low-income countries are eligible for lower-cost HPV vaccines…but many women with a high risk of death from cervical cancer live in countries deemed too wealthy for this special access…In other words, developing countries can effectively be disadvantaged by virtue of their economic success.
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Related on the SLP
The case must also be made for leverage existing resources, for example by providing breast health education and cervical screening at reproductive health clinics.
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Investments must be made now, including direct international assistance for health, as well as increased expenditures from national governments. Countries moving towards universal health coverage must expand beyond traditional packages that focus exclusively on infectious diseases and mother-and-child health to incorporate services for breast and cervical cancer.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Women’s cancers: curable for the rich, often a death sentence for the poor
