Last week I was privileged to spend a few hours at a very special clinic in Site B, Khayelitsha, Cape Town. 

In a number of unassuming refurbished shipping containers, a team of dedicated nurses and doctors have been screening and treating hundreds of women at risk of developing cervical cancer. They have also been on the forefront of research into new high-tech, yet surprisingly simple treatments that can be a game changer when it comes to fighting cervical cancer. 

These new initiatives cannot come quickly enough. 

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among South African women, but it is also the cancer women die of most. Shockingly, the five year survival rate in Sub-Saharan Africa is only about 30% which means that 70% of women contracting cervical cancer will die within 5 years of diagnosis. In South Africa it is somewhere between 50 and 60%, compared to only 25% in Australia and 20% in the UK. 

This not only means agonising deaths for the women affected, but also has wider social impacts. A study found that globally more than a million orphans are created each year from the deaths of women with cancer – of which half is from cervical or breast cancers. Shockingly, only 25% of these orphans under the age of ten will be alive five years later and those who do survive usually don’t get much educational, social and emotional support. 

Frustratingly, cervical cancer is one of the few cancers that are almost 100% preventable or treatable with early intervention.

In fact, many argue that in a generation we could eradicate cervical cancer completely. 

For that we firstly need wide-spread vaccinations. 

About 99% of cervical cancers are caused by the HPV virus, which is sexually transmitted. Most men carry the HPV virus and will show absolutely no symptoms. A healthy immune system can usually fight off the virus, but in about 10% of the cases the virus penetrates the cervix, cells mutate and cause a very dangerous form of cancer. 

Yet, there is a simple vaccine that can prevent this. 

In Norway, for example, after immunising all girls through a national vaccination program, researchers have recently reported finding no cases of cervical cancer caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV) in these girls when they turned 25. 

Nigeria recently announced that they would include HPV vaccines in their regular vaccination programme targeting over 7 million girls and last week it was reported that India has now manufactured their own HPV vaccine. 

In South Africa the state started to roll out a vaccination programme, but it came to a halt during COVID and is still not fully back on track. This needs to change urgently. 

In addition we have to step up our screening programmes. 

Cervical cancers can be successfully treated if discovered in time. Even though pap smears are available to all women in South Africa, the system often breaks down. The samples are frequently unusable, it takes up to 6 weeks to get results and often women don’t get their results at all. This is why the work of Prof Lynette Denny from UCT, one of the world’s leading experts on cervical cancer, and her team in Khayelitsha is so important. 

They have been trialling the HPV DNA testing system. A simple swab is taken vaginally and then analysed by a machine for the presence of the specific strain/s of HPV (only a few strains cause almost all cervical cancers). The results are available in an hour and assuming that the women are still pre-cancerous they can then be treated immediately with thermal ablation – a painless treatment which gets rid of abnormal cells.

This test-and-treat method means women can go home within a few hours – no need for lengthy waiting times or return trips to the clinic. 

This system can make a huge difference in the cost and efficacy of eradicating cervical cancer and should be rolled out more widely by the government in order to save thousands of women from having to deal with this ordeal which would often lead to their deaths. 

Prof Langanani Mbodi from WITS and Charlotte Maxeke Hospital points out that all the necessary treatments are available to women diagnosed with cervical cancer in the public sector. However, they will often have to wait months to get operated on and again to get chemotherapy or radiation. Since time is of the essence it contributes to the high mortality rate. 

We are failing the thousands of women who die unnecessarily every year from cervical cancer in South Africa.

Since there are 3 million more female registered voters, a commitment to eradicate cervical cancer might be a good place for political parties to start, if they are serious about getting those 3 million votes.