Cancer Data Base

Every two minutes a woman died because of cervical cancer.

In some countries cervical cancer is the number one cancer occurred to woman. Poor knowledge of women to this cancer is the main trigger of rapid incidence of the disease.

Every woman - without reference to age and background- can be incured by cervical cancer, the cancer that caused by infection of human papilloma virus (HPV).

In Pacific Asia about 266.000 cases of cervical cancer can be found every year, 143.000 of them passed away in productive age.

In developing countries only 41% of patients of cervical cancer will get the treatment which they require to get healing.

Combination of early detection through screening and vaccination can depress the number of occurence of cervical cancer to woman.

Cervical cancer really influences the quality of a woman life and her closest environment: her family. In consequence, each woman has to alert to cervical cancer by knowing the disease, its detection and prevention accurately.

Early Detection
There is no symptom of cervical cancer in early stage. But it can be detected, that is by conducting Pap Smears. The advantage of Pap Smears is to find the cancer earlier so the management will much easier and the woman has a better quality of life.A woman should do Pap Smears one year after she is sexually active, and repeats it regularly every year. There are 100 types of HPV identified and most of them are not harmful and also do not show the symptom. Fourty types of HPV may be contagious through sexual intercourse; they are classified into two groups: HPV causing cancer and low risk HPV.

Every woman is having the risk of being infected by cervical cancer during their life without reference to age and life style. HPV easily infected through skin contact and sexual intercourse. Condom use cannot lessen the risk of spreading HPV.

About 50-80% women are infected by HPV through sexual contact. About 50% of the infection is potencial to grow to be cancer. The risk is started from the very first sexual contact.

Not likely other viruses, if a woman is infected by HPV, it does not mean that she will have immunity to the virus. The woman remains to have risks to get the repeated infection from same or different types of HPV.

Vaccination
Other prevention is conducting HPV vaccination. In this time there is available vaccine of type 16 HPV and type 18 HPV. These types are responsible to 70% cases of cervical cancer in Asia.

Vaccine will improve the ability of immune system to recognize and to kill the virus when it enters the body before the occurance of infection.

Vaccination combined with screening can lessen the risk of cervical cancer better than only screening.