CCC Welcomes 26 New "See and Treat" Trainees in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia!

Cervical cancer is the leading cause of death of women in Ethiopia and it is no coincidence that CureCervicalCancer had the humbling opportunity to help establish 4 new ongoing clinics in the surrounding region of Addis Ababa. CCC seeks to help regions around the world where the prevalence of cervical cancer is high because we want to help prevent the spread of the disease from taking more mothers and sisters away from their families. We are confident that all four clinics—St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College, Feleg Meles Hospital, Kolfe Hospital, and Alert Hospital— will continue to provide these services to the women of their community. Today, April 17, 2015, CureCervicalCancer welcomes 26 additional graduates consisting of nurses, midwives, and other community healthcare providers who are now trained and certified in the “See and Treat” procedure. Despite the short time we had, the CCC trainers and their trainees screened 618 women and saw 119 patients who were VIA positive resulting in an overall positivity rate of 19.3% during this week long training. Extrapolating this data, if our newly trained “See and Treat” healthcare providers operate 25% of the rate we did this week for just a year, they could screen approximately 7,400 total women and of this number, 1,400 women would be VIA positive (given the same positivity rate). Throughout the week, the trainees had attended a two hour informational lecture on the “see and treat” method, learned how to distinguish VIA positive lesions from VIA negative, and performed the cryotherapy procedure under supervision at least 5 times. It is with great pleasure and profound gratitude that we welcome our new trainees to the CCC team and we look forward to returning soon!   Authored by: Yvonne Nong and Stephen Morris, CCC Coordinators