Community-based screening of cervical cancer in a low prevalence area of India: a cross sectional study

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer of women in the world. The disease is amenable to various screening tests of which cytological screening by the Papanicolaou technique remains the mainstay for mass screening. The aim of the present study was to establish the prevalence of cervical cancer in a rural ethnically Muslim community in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in India. For this, a community based screening for cancer cervix was conducted on married women aged 20-65 years. Following provision of information to promote awareness on Pap smear and its role in prevention of cervical cancer, 270 women were screened for cancer cervix by the conventional technique. Of the 270 subjects, the majority were married before 19 years of age (81.1%) and 42.5% delivered their first child within 1-2 years. Multiparity was seen to the tune of 51.3 %. There was no evidence of cervical dysplasia or cancer cervix among the screened population. Despite the presence of risk factors of high parity, early age of marriage and early childbirth after marriage, absence of cervical dysplasia and malignancy emphasizes the fact that socio-cultural factors, like absence of promiscuity and male circumcision, play an important role in the low prevalence of cancer cervix.