The management of pre-invasive stage of cervical disease in a low-resource setting

Cervical cancer is one of the commonest cancers in women. It is also the most preventable cancer. Numerous population based studies have shown that the development of a population based screening program can significantly reduce the incidence of and death rate from cervical cancer. However, it is expensive and requires a large and complex infrastructure to run such a program. As the disease goes through a prolonged pre-invasive phase (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, CIN) there is ample time in which to treat this phase. Furthermore, this treatment only involves the destruction of the surface epithelium of the cervix. There is ample evidence that those women who have undergone cervical diathermy, for whatever reason, have a lower subsequent incidence of cervical cancer.