Thousands of women in Haiti are dying each year from a preventable disease, cervical cancer. Most women in Haiti have never been screened for the disease due to restricted access to care and a limited number of healthcare workers trained to provide screening and treatment. To reduce the number of deaths, Worldwide Healing Hands (WHH) is sending a medical team to Haiti to conduct much-needed training for Haitian OB/GYNs and staff in the methods used to screen and treat in a single visit.
Cervical cancer cases number 94 per every 100,000 women in Haiti, giving Haiti the distinction of having the highest incident rate in the world. However, the cancer is preventable and treatable. Haitian women do not receive needed screening and treatment due to few resources and limited access to medical professionals trained in the screening methods. Pap smears are not available to women in these low-resource areas. Providing screening even once for a woman can save her life.
WHH will partner with Project Medishare For Haiti to provide screenings and the necessary treatment to women during its one-week mission in January. In addition, WHH's medical team will educate and train at least two OB/GYNs, as well as nurses and affiliate professionals. WHH teaches the single visit approach so women, no matter where they live, can be screened and treated. This life-saving approach is vital; when a mother dies, her children are 10 times more likely to die within 2 years.
WHH will train Haitian doctors during the mission so that they, in turn, will train additional medical professionals in cervical cancer screenings and treatment. While conducting screenings and treatment during this mission, WHH will use the screenings as training/educational tools for local professionals who then will be able to increase the number of trained providers, boost prevention of the deadly disease, and reduce the number of women's deaths caused by cervical cancer.
